2. "_Ambivalency_, which gives two opposed emotional expressions to the same idea, and would regard that idea as positive and negative at the same time."
3. "_The schizophrenic splitting_ of the psyche prevents any final summing up of the conflicting and corresponding psychisms, so that the unsuitable impulse can be realised just as much as the right one, and the negative thought substituted for the right one." "On this theory, negative manifestations may directly arise, since non-selected positive and negative psychisms may stand for one another," and so on.
If we investigate psychoanalytically a case of obvious ambivalency, _i.e._ of a more or less unexpected negative reaction instead of a positive one, we find that there is a strict sequence of psychological causes conditioning negative reaction. The tendency of this sequence is to disturb the intention of the contrasting or opposite series, that is to say, _it is resistance set up by a complex_. This fact, which has not yet been refuted by any other observations, seems to me to contradict the above-mentioned formulæ. (For confirmation, see my "Psychology of Dementia Præcox," p. 103.) Psychoanalysis has proved conclusively that a resistance always has an intention and a meaning; that there is no such thing as a capricious playing with contrasts. The systematic character of resistance holds good, as I believe I have proved, even in schizophrenia. So long as this position, founded upon a great variety of experience, is not disproved by any other observations, the theory of negativism must adapt itself to it. Bleuler in a sense supports this when he says: "For the most part the negative reaction does not simply appear as accidental, _but is actually preferred to the right one_." This is an admission that negativism is of the nature of resistance. Once admit this, and the primary importance of ambivalency disappears so far as negativism is concerned. The tendency to resistance remains as the only fundamental principle. Ambivalency can in no sense be put on all fours with the "schizophrenic splitting of the psyche," but must be regarded as a concept which gives expression to the universal and ever-present inner association of pairs of opposites. (One of the most remarkable examples of this is the "contrary meaning of root-words." See Freud's "Essay on Dreams," Jahrbuch, vol. II., p. 179.) The same thing applies to ambitendency. Neither is specific of schizophrenia, but applies equally to the neuroses and the normal. All that is specific to katatonic negativism is _the intentional contrast, i.e. the resistance_. From this explanation we see that resistance is something different from ambivalency; it is the dynamic factor which makes manifest the everywhere latent ambivalency. What is characteristic of the diseased mind is not ambivalency but resistance. This implies the existence of a conflict between two opposite tendencies which has succeeded in raising the normally present ambivalency into a struggle of opposing components. (Freud has very aptly called this, "The separation of pairs of opposites.") In other words it is a conflict of wills, bringing about the neurotic condition of "disharmony within the self." This condition is the only "splitting of the psyche" known to us, and is not so much to be regarded as a predisposing cause, but rather as a manifestation resulting from the inner conflict--the "incompatibility of the complex" (Riklin).