The modern understanding of conflicts in the social sciences comes from the idea of the positive functions of conflict. This is easily accepted when it comes to the theoretical reasoning of sociologists about the processes taking place in social systems. But the psychologist deals with living people and sees a suffering person in front of him, who is having a hard time experiencing life's difficulties, which can be emotionally difficult to reconcile with arguments about the benefits of conflicts.
However, modern psychology is also characterized by the recognition of the dual nature of the conflict, including its positive role.
Conflict is the source of development. The most important positive function of conflict is that, being a form of contradiction, conflict is a source of development. The more significant the conflict is for the participants in the situation, the potentially stronger its influence on their intellectual development. The thesis about contradictions as a source of group development, including possible competitive processes, can also be considered generally recognized. Thus, B. F. Lomov believes that in joint activities, “rivalry (cooperation) plays the role of a kind of “catalyst” for the development of abilities.” Competition plays a similar function of stimulating activity and development in a group.
Conflict is a signal for change. Of the other positive functions of conflict, the signaling function is the most obvious. Discussing the types of critical situations, F. E. Vasilyuk emphasizes the positive role, the “necessity” of internal conflicts for life: “They signal objective contradictions in life relations and give a chance to resolve them before a real collision of these relations is fraught with disastrous consequences.”
Conflicts perform a similar signaling function in interpersonal relationships. Take, for example, the relationship between parents and children. If parents perceive the child’s disagreement, his new claims and attempts to discuss them with parents solely as disobedience, then they will fight his disobedience, insist on their own, and thereby most likely worsen, and perhaps even destroy their relationship with the child. Gradually accumulating tension is like steam, the pressure of which bursts a tightly closed boiler.
A constructive response will be to perceive what is happening not as defiance, but as a signal of the need for change. Perhaps an analogy with pain would be appropriate here. Pain is unpleasant, but any doctor will tell you that it performs an important and useful function. Pain is a signal that something is wrong in the body. By ignoring or drowning out the pain with sedative pills, we are left with the disease. Conflict, like pain, serves as a signaling function, telling us that something is wrong in our relationship or in ourselves. And if we, in response to this signal, try to make changes in our interaction, we come to a new state of adaptation in the relationship. If we reach a new level of adaptation at each stage of our relationship, this ensures the preservation, “survival” of our relationship.
Conflict is an opportunity for rapprochement. On the psychological material, examples can be found that illustrate other positive functions of the conflict, for example, "communicative-informational" and "connecting" (in Coser's terminology).
As an example, consider the story of a young woman. She married very early, she was not yet nineteen years old. Her chosen one was several years older than her, and although he was also young, it seemed to her that he was wiser and more experienced. Perhaps this is what led to the fact that, despite a good relationship with him, she felt some kind of constraint in her soul, felt the distance that separated them. After the birth of the child, their relationship began to deteriorate and finally approached that dangerous line, after which, perhaps, parting awaited them. However, there was that often unexpected breakthrough, for which there is always hope. They began to sort things out and in the course of this frank conversation they understood each other. After telling this rather banal story, the woman added at the end: “I am so glad that this conflict then was between us. Because since then my husband and I have become absolutely close to each other people. I can tell him anything and everything that's in my heart.
She associates this new level of relations between them precisely with the conflict that has taken place. The moment of breakthrough, when people have nothing to lose, when they are trying to break through to each other, may be their last opportunity for mutual understanding. No wonder the sociologists of the Chicago School said: "Conflict is an opportunity to speak frankly."
Positive functions of intragroup conflicts
The traditional point of view not only of sociologists, but also of psychologists who worked with groups, was that conflicts are a negative phenomenon for the group and the task is to eliminate them. The tendency to seek social harmony in groups goes back to the "human relations" school: avoiding conflict, seen as a "social disease", and promoting "balance" or a "cooperative state". However, thanks to the conflict, the initial establishment of unity or its restoration, if it was previously violated, is possible. Of course, not every type of conflict will contribute to the strengthening of the group, just as not in all groups the conflict can realize such functions. The presence of these positive conflict potentials is determined by its type, as well as by the characteristics of the group.
Each group contains the potential for conflict due to the recurring rivalry between the demands of individuals. The nature of the group will significantly affect the characteristics of these conflicts, in particular, their functions. So, Koser believes that the closer the group, the more intense the conflict. If, nevertheless, a conflict arises in such a close-knit group, then it will proceed with particular intensity due to the “accumulated” discontent and full personal involvement, which is characteristic of a group with close ties. Conflict in groups of this type will threaten their very foundations and therefore be destructive.
The nature of the group's relations with the external environment will also be essential for intra-group conflict. Thus, groups that are in a state of more or less constant confrontation with other groups will tend to involve their members more personally in common activities and to suppress deviations from group unity and discord. Greater tolerance for intra-group conflicts will be characteristic of groups whose relations with the external environment are more balanced.
Internal conflict also serves as a means of identifying conflicting interests among members of the group and thereby contributes to the possibility of a new agreement, ensuring the restoration of the necessary balance.
Conflicts often lead to the creation of associations and coalitions within groups, which ensures interaction between members of the entire association, reduces isolation, and creates the ground for the implementation of individual activity of group members.
In general, pointing out the positive possibilities of conflict in flexible social structures, L. Koser calls it the most important stabilizing mechanism, the mechanism for adapting norms to new conditions.
Conflict is an opportunity to relieve tension, to “heal” relationships. The function of stress relief, "healing" of relationships, which the conflict potentially contains, can be purposefully used in pedagogical practice. For example, A. S. Makarenko considered conflict as a pedagogical means of influencing people's relations.
Interestingly, R. May considers it possible to use the same method of intensifying experiences to initiate a beneficial crisis in psychotherapeutic practice. He writes about how he once received an extremely emotional letter from a young man who asked him for help: “In my reply letter, I set out to exacerbate his feelings to the utmost and cause a crisis. I wrote that he was accustomed to his position as a spoiled child, who was always toyed with, and now in his suffering there is nothing but self-pity and a complete lack of courage to cope with the situation. I deliberately did not leave any loophole to save the prestige of his "I". May believes, judging by the response, that his goal was achieved and led to constructive steps.
Emphasizing the potential positive possibilities of conflict should not make us forget about its likely destructive role in the life of the individual. It can be considered a generally accepted idea not only of the positive significance of the effective resolution and overcoming of emerging intrapersonal crises, conflicts, contradictions by a person, but also of the negative, and even destructive influence that their failure to overcome can have on the development of a healthy personality. We can evaluate a person’s exit from a conflict or crisis as productive if, as a result, he really “frees himself” from the problem that gave rise to him in such a way that the experience makes him more mature, psychologically adequate and integrated.
The emotional experience of a crisis situation, no matter how strong it may be, does not in itself lead to overcoming it. In the same way, analyzing a situation, thinking about it, only leads to a better understanding of it. The real problem lies in the creation of a new meaning, in “meaning generation”, “meaning-building”, when the result of the inner work of the individual to overcome, live critical life situations are changes in his inner subjective world - gaining a new meaning, a new value attitude, restoring peace of mind and etc.
On the contrary, those strategies that, in essence, are psychologically ineffective, no matter how the individual evaluates them, actually turn out to be aimed at weakening, mitigating the severity of the crisis experienced and the emotional states that accompany it. If we recall the previously used medical analogy, we can say that in the first case, a person, having felt pain, tries to find out its cause and cope with it by curing the disease, and in the second case, he simply takes pills, trying to drown out the discomfort.
The general practical position can be expressed by the words of R. May already quoted: "...Our task is to turn destructive conflicts into constructive ones."
ARTICLES ON THE SAME TOPICinterpersonal conflict psychological emotional
When discussing the understanding of conflicts in the social sciences, it was noted that the modern point of view comes from the notion of the positive functions of conflict.
This is easily accepted when it comes to the theoretical reasoning of sociologists about the processes taking place in social systems. But the psychologist deals with living people and sees a suffering person in front of him, who is having a hard time experiencing life's difficulties, which can be emotionally difficult to reconcile with arguments about the benefits of conflicts.
However, modern psychology is also characterized by the recognition of the dual nature of the conflict, including its positive role.
Conflict is the source of development.
The most important positive function of conflict is that, being a form of contradiction, conflict is a source of development. This function of conflict, which takes the form of a crisis, found its most explicit expression in Erickson's concept. Along with it, there are many other more particular applications of the general thesis about the positive role of contradictions in the development of the individual. For example, a number of studies based on the ideas of Jean Piaget and his school show that sociocognitive conflicts can be a source of children's intellectual development. Sociocognitive conflict is understood as a situation where individuals have different answers to the same problem and are motivated to achieve a joint solution. The more significant this conflict is for the participants in the situation, the stronger its potential impact on their intellectual development. The thesis about contradictions as a source of development of groups, including possible competitive processes, can also be considered generally accepted. B.F. Lomov believes that in joint activities, "rivalry (cooperation) plays the role of a kind of" catalyst "for the development of abilities." Competition plays a similar function of stimulating activity and development in a group. The adoption of this point of view was manifested in the fact that the term “productive conflict” was first introduced into the psychological dictionary of 1990.
Conflict is a signal for change.
Of the other positive functions of conflict, the signaling function is the most obvious. Discussing the types of critical situations, F.E. Vasilyuk emphasizes the positive role, the "necessity" of internal conflicts for life: "they signal the objective contradictions of life relations and give a chance to resolve them before a real collision of these relations is fraught with disastrous consequences."
Conflicts perform a similar signaling function in interpersonal relationships. For example, if parents perceive the child’s disagreement, his new claims and attempts to discuss them with parents solely as disobedience, then they will fight his disobedience, insist on their own, and thereby most likely worsen, and perhaps even destroy their relationship with the child. The most acute and painful conflicts with adolescents arise in those families where they have been in an atmosphere of repression since childhood. Gradually accumulating tension is like steam, the pressure of which bursts a tightly closed boiler.
A constructive response will be to perceive what is happening not as defiance, but as a signal of the need for change. Perhaps an analogy with pain would be appropriate here. Pain is unpleasant, but any doctor will tell you that it performs an important and useful function. Pain is a signal that something is wrong in the body. By ignoring or drowning out the pain with sedative pills, we are left with the disease. Conflict, like pain, serves as a signaling function, telling us that something is wrong in our relationship or in ourselves. And if we, in response to this signal, try to make changes in our interaction, we come to a new state of adaptation in the relationship. In the same way, an adequate reaction of parents will be to adapt their behavior, their requirements and expectations to a new level of development of the child, his independence and autonomy. If we reach a new level of adaptation at each stage of our relationship, this ensures the preservation, “survival” of our relationship.
S. Minukhin and C. Fishman describe the situation associated with the departure of adult children from the family, which they call the “empty nest period” and which is often associated with depression in women: “however, in fact, the marital subsystem again becomes for both of its members the most important family holon, although when grandchildren appear, new relationships have to be developed here too. This period, often described as a period of confusion, may instead become a period of rapid development, if the spouses, both as individuals and as a couple, use their accumulated experience, their dreams and expectations, to realize opportunities previously unavailable due to the need to fulfill their parental duty. .
Conflict is an opportunity for rapprochement.
There are other examples illustrating the positive functions of the conflict, such as "communicative-informational" and "connecting" (in Coser's terminology).
As an example, consider the story of a young woman. She married early, she was not yet nineteen years old. Her chosen one was several years older than her, and although he was also young, it seemed to her that he had a good relationship with him, she felt some kind of constraint in her soul, felt the distance separating them. After the birth of a child, they are wiser than her and more experienced. Perhaps this is what led to the fact that, despite the relationship, they began to deteriorate and, finally, they approached that dangerous line, after which, perhaps, parting awaited them. However, there was that often unexpected breakthrough, for which there is always hope. They began to sort things out and in the course of this frank conversation they understood each other. After telling this story, the woman at the end added: “I am so glad that this conflict was then between us.
Because since then my husband and I have become absolutely close to each other people. I do not have a person closer to him, neither my mother, nor my child, no, he is my closest person. I can tell him everything that is in my soul.
She connects this new level of relations between them with the conflict. The moment of breakthrough, when people have nothing to lose, when they are trying to break through to each other, may be their last opportunity for mutual understanding. No wonder the sociologists of the Chicago school said: "Conflict is an opportunity to talk honestly"
Conflict is an opportunity to defuse tension, to "improve relations."
The function of stress relief, "healing" of relationships, which the conflict potentially contains, can be purposefully used in pedagogical practice. For example, A.S. Makarenko considered conflict as a pedagogical means of influencing people's relations. He has an unfinished work "On the Explosion", in which he points out that in the team there is always a whole complex of various contradictions of "different degrees of conflict". Choosing “from the general chain of conflict relations the most striking, bulging and convincing, understandable to everyone”, Makarenko recommends resolving it by the “explosion” method. By “explosion”, he calls bringing the conflict to the last limit, to such a state when there is no longer any possibility for any evolution, for any litigation between the individual and society, when the question is posed point-blank - either to be a member of society or leave it. This last limit can be expressed in various forms, but in all cases its main task is to break up erroneously formed relations, in the place of which new relations and new concepts are built. Makarenko showed great interest in the phenomenon of "explosion", although he stipulated at the same time that "explosive maneuver is a very painful and pedagogically difficult thing."
R. May considers it possible to use the same method of intensifying experiences to initiate a beneficial crisis in psychotherapeutic practice. He writes about how he once received an extremely emotional letter from a young man who asked him for help: “In my reply letter, I set out to exacerbate his feelings to the utmost and cause a crisis. I wrote that he was accustomed to his position as a spoiled child, who was always toyed with, and now in his suffering there is nothing but self-pity and a complete lack of courage to cope with the situation. I deliberately left no loophole to save the prestige of his “I”.26 May believes, judging by the response, that his goal was achieved and led to constructive steps.
Emphasizing the potential positive possibilities of conflict should not make us forget about its likely destructive role in the life of the individual. It can be considered a generally accepted idea not only of the positive significance of the effective resolution and overcoming of emerging intrapersonal crises, conflicts, contradictions by a person, but also of the negative, and even destructive influence that their failure to overcome can have on the development of a healthy personality. We can evaluate a person’s exit from a conflict or crisis as productive if, as a result, he really “frees himself” from the problem that gave rise to him in such a way that the experience makes him more mature, psychologically adequate and integrated.
F. Vasilyuk notes that the emotional experience of a crisis situation, no matter how strong it is, does not in itself lead to overcoming it. In the same way, analyzing a situation, thinking about it, only leads to a better understanding of it.
The real problem lies in the creation of a new meaning, in “meaning generation”, “meaning-building”, when the result of the inner work of a person to overcome, live critical life situations are changes in his inner subjective world - gaining a new meaning, a new value attitude, restoring peace of mind and etc.
On the contrary, those strategies that, in essence, are psychologically ineffective, no matter how the individual evaluates them, actually turn out to be aimed at weakening, mitigating the severity of the crisis experienced and the emotional states that accompany it. If we recall the previously used medical analogy, we can say that in the first case, a person, having felt pain, tries to find out its cause and cope with it by curing the disease, and in the second case, he simply takes pills, trying to drown out the discomfort.
The general practical position can be expressed in May's words: "...Our task is to turn destructive conflicts into constructive ones."
When discussing the understanding of conflicts in the social sciences, it was noted that the modern point of view comes from the notion of the positive functions of conflict.
This is easily accepted when it comes to the theoretical reasoning of sociologists about the processes taking place in social systems. But the psychologist deals with living people and sees a suffering person in front of him, who is having a hard time experiencing life's difficulties, which can be emotionally difficult to reconcile with arguments about the benefits of conflicts.
However, modern psychology is also characterized by the recognition of the dual nature of the conflict, including its positive role.
Conflict is the source of development. The most important positive function of conflict is that, being a form of contradiction, conflict is a source of development. This function of conflict, which takes the form of a crisis, found its most explicit expression in Erickson's concept. Along with it, there are many other, more specific applications of the general thesis about the positive role of
contradictions in the development of the individual. For example, a number of studies based on the ideas of Jean Piaget and his school show that socio-cognitive conflicts can be a source of children's intellectual development. Socio-cognitive conflict is understood as a situation where individuals have different answers to the same problem and are motivated to achieve a joint solution. The more significant this conflict is for the participants in the situation, the stronger its potential impact on their intellectual development (Levine, Resnick, Higgins, 1993). The thesis about contradictions as a source of group development, including possible competitive processes, can also be considered generally recognized. Thus, B. F. Lomov believes that in joint activities, “rivalry (cooperation) plays the role of a kind of “catalyst” for the development of abilities” (Lomov, 1984, p. 325). Competition plays a similar function of stimulating activity and development in a group. The adoption of this point of view was manifested in the fact that the term “productive conflict” was first introduced into the psychological dictionary of 1990 (Psychology. Dictionary, 1990).
Conflict is a signal for change. Of the other positive functions of conflict, the signaling function is the most obvious. Discussing the types of critical situations, F. E. Vasilyuk emphasizes the positive role, the “necessity” of internal conflicts for life: “They signal the objective contradictions of life relations and give a chance to resolve them before a real collision of these relations is fraught with disastrous consequences” (Vasilyuk, 1995, p. , 94).
Conflicts perform a similar signaling function in interpersonal relationships. Let's go back to the parent-child example. If parents perceive the child’s disagreement, his new claims and attempts to discuss them with parents solely as disobedience, then they will fight his disobedience, insist on their own, and thereby, most likely, worsen, and perhaps even destroy their relationship with the child. The most acute and painful conflicts with adolescents arise in those families where they have been in an atmosphere of repression since childhood. Gradually accumulating tension is like steam, the pressure of which bursts a tightly closed boiler.
A constructive response will be to perceive what is happening not as defiance, but as a signal of the need for change. Perhaps an analogy with pain would be appropriate here. Pain is unpleasant, but any doctor will say that it performs an important and useful function. Pain is a signal that something is wrong in the body. By ignoring or drowning out the pain with sedative pills, we are left with the disease. Conflict, like pain, serves as a signaling function, telling us that something is wrong in our relationship or in ourselves. And if we, in response to this signal, try to make changes in our interaction, we come to a new state of adaptation in the relationship. In the same way, an adequate reaction of parents will be to adapt their behavior, their requirements and expectations to a new level of development of the child, his independence and autonomy. If we reach a new level of adaptation at each stage of our relationship, this ensures the preservation, “survival” of our relationship.
S. Minukhin and Ch. Fishman describe the situation associated with the departure of adult children from the family, which they call the “empty nest period” and which
often associated with depression in women: “However, in fact, the marital subsystem again becomes the most important family slave for both of its members, although when grandchildren appear, new relationships have to be developed here too. This period, often described as a period of confusion, can instead become a period of rapid development, if the spouses, both as individuals and as a couple, use their accumulated experience, their dreams and expectations to realize opportunities that were previously inaccessible due to the need to fulfill their parental duty. » (Minukhin, Fishman, 1998, pp. 32-33).
Conflict is an opportunity for rapprochement. On the psychological material, examples can be found that illustrate other positive functions of the conflict, for example, "communicative-informational" and "connecting" (in Coser's terminology).
As an example, I will give the story of one young woman. She married early, she was not yet nineteen years old. Her chosen one was several years older than her, and although he was also young, it seemed to her that he was wiser and more experienced. Perhaps this is what led to the fact that, despite a good relationship with him, she felt some kind of constraint in her soul, felt the distance that separated them. After the birth of the child, their relationship began to deteriorate and finally approached that dangerous line, after which, perhaps, parting awaited them. However, there was that often unexpected breakthrough, for which there is always hope. They began to sort things out and in the course of this frank conversation they understood each other. After telling this rather banal story, the woman added at the end: “I am so glad that this conflict then was between us. Because since then my husband and I have become absolutely close to each other people. I do not have a person closer to him, neither my mother, nor my child, no, he is my closest person. I can tell him anything and everything that's in my heart.
She associates this new level of relations between them precisely with the conflict that has taken place. The moment of breakthrough, when people have nothing to lose, when they are trying to break through to each other, may be their last opportunity for mutual understanding. No wonder the sociologists of the Chicago School said: "Conflict is an opportunity to speak frankly."
Conflict is an opportunity to relieve tension, to "heal" relationships. The function of stress relief, "healing" of relationships, which the conflict potentially contains, can be purposefully used in pedagogical practice. For example, A. S. Makarenko considered conflict as a pedagogical means of influencing people's relations. He has an unfinished work "On the "explosion" (1949), in which he points out that in the team there is always a whole complex of various contradictions" of different degrees of conflict. Choosing “from the general chain of conflict relations the most striking, bulging and convincing, understandable to everyone”, Makarenko recommends resolving it by the “explosion” method. “I call an explosion bringing the conflict to the last limit, to such a state when there is no longer any possibility for any evolution, for any litigation between the individual and society, when the question is posed point-blank - either to be a member of society or leave it” (Makarenko, 1958, p. 508). This after-
The daily limit can be expressed in various forms, but in all cases its main task is to break up erroneously formed relations, in the place of which new relations and new concepts are built. Makarenko showed great interest in the “explosion” phenomenon, although he stipulated that “an explosive maneuver is a very painful and pedagogically difficult thing” (ibid., p. 510).
Interestingly, R. May considers it possible to use the same method of intensifying experiences to initiate a beneficial crisis in psychotherapeutic practice. He writes about how he once received an extremely emotional letter from a young man who asked him for help: “In my reply letter, I set out to exacerbate his feelings to the utmost and cause a crisis. I wrote that he was accustomed to his position as a spoiled child, who was always toyed with, and now in his suffering there is nothing but self-pity and a complete lack of courage to cope with the situation. I deliberately did not leave any loophole to save the prestige of his "I" ”(May, 1994, p. 99). May believes, judging by the response, that his goal was achieved and led to constructive steps.
Emphasizing the potential positive possibilities of conflict should not make us forget about its likely destructive role in the life of the individual. It can be considered a generally accepted idea not only of the positive significance of the effective resolution and overcoming of emerging intrapersonal crises, conflicts, contradictions by a person, but also of the negative, and even destructive influence that their failure to overcome can have on the development of a healthy personality. We can evaluate a person’s exit from a conflict or crisis as productive if, as a result, he really “frees himself” from the problem that gave rise to him in such a way that the experience makes him more mature, psychologically adequate and integrated.
F. Vasilyuk notes that the emotional experience of a crisis situation, no matter how strong it may be, does not in itself lead to overcoming it. In the same way, analyzing a situation, thinking about it, only leads to a better understanding of it. The real problem lies in the creation of a new meaning, in “meaning generation”, “meaning-building”, when the result of the inner work of a person to overcome, live critical life situations are changes in his inner subjective world - gaining a new meaning, a new value attitude, restoring peace of mind and etc. (Vasilyuk, 1984).
On the contrary, those strategies that, in essence, are psychologically ineffective, no matter how the individual evaluates them, actually turn out to be aimed at weakening, mitigating the severity of the crisis experienced and the emotional states that accompany it. If we recall the previously used medical analogy, we can say that in the first case, a person, having felt pain, tries to find out its cause and cope with it by curing the disease, and in the second case, he simply takes pills, trying to drown out the discomfort.
The general practical position can be expressed by the words of May already quoted: “...Our task is turning destructive conflicts into constructive ones(May, 1994, p. 30).
The modern understanding of conflicts in the social sciences comes from the idea of the positive functions of conflict.
This is easily accepted when it comes to the theoretical reasoning of sociologists about the processes taking place in social systems. But the psychologist deals with living people and sees a suffering person in front of him, who is having a hard time experiencing life's difficulties, which can be emotionally difficult to reconcile with arguments about the benefits of conflicts.
However, modern psychology is also characterized by the recognition of the dual nature of the conflict, including its positive role.
Conflict is the source of development. The most important positive function of conflict is that, being a form of contradiction, conflict is a source of development. The more significant the conflict is for the participants in the situation, the potentially stronger its influence on their intellectual development. The thesis about contradictions as a source of group development, including possible competitive processes, can also be considered generally recognized. So, B. F. Lomov believes that in joint activities, “rivalry (cooperation) plays the role of a kind of“ catalyst ”for the development of abilities.” Competition plays a similar function of stimulating activity and development in a group.
Conflict is a signal for change. Of the other positive functions of conflict, the signaling function is the most obvious. Discussing the types of critical situations, F. E. Vasilyuk emphasizes the positive role, the “necessity” of internal conflicts for life: “They signal objective contradictions in life relations and give a chance to resolve them before a real collision of these relations is fraught with disastrous consequences.”
Conflicts perform a similar signaling function in interpersonal relationships. Take, for example, the relationship between parents and children. If parents perceive the child’s disagreement, his new claims and attempts to discuss them with parents solely as disobedience, then they will fight his disobedience, insist on their own, and thereby most likely worsen, and perhaps even destroy their relationship with the child. Gradually accumulating tension is like steam, the pressure of which bursts a tightly closed boiler.
A constructive response will be to perceive what is happening not as defiance, but as a signal of the need for change. Perhaps an analogy with pain would be appropriate here. Pain is unpleasant, but any doctor will tell you that it performs an important and useful function. Pain is a signal that something is wrong in the body. By ignoring or drowning out the pain with sedative pills, we are left with the disease. Conflict, like pain, serves as a signaling function, telling us that something is wrong in our relationship or in ourselves. And if we, in response to this signal, try to make changes in our interaction, we come to a new state of adaptation in the relationship. If we reach a new level of adaptation at each stage of our relationship, this ensures the preservation, “survival” of our relationship.
Conflict is an opportunity for rapprochement. On the psychological material, examples can be found that illustrate other positive functions of the conflict, for example, "communicative-informational" and "connecting" (in Coser's terminology).
As an example, consider the story of a young woman. She married very early, she was not yet nineteen years old. Her chosen one was several years older than her, and although he was also young, it seemed to her that he was wiser and more experienced. Perhaps this is what led to the fact that, despite a good relationship with him, she felt some kind of constraint in her soul, felt the distance that separated them. After the birth of the child, their relationship began to deteriorate and finally approached that dangerous line, after which, perhaps, parting awaited them. However, there was that often unexpected breakthrough, for which there is always hope. They began to sort things out and in the course of this frank conversation they understood each other. After telling this rather banal story, the woman added at the end: “I am so glad that this conflict then was between us. Because since then my husband and I have become absolutely close to each other people. I can tell him anything and everything that's in my heart.
She associates this new level of relations between them precisely with the conflict that has taken place. The moment of breakthrough, when people have nothing to lose, when they are trying to break through to each other, may be their last opportunity for mutual understanding. No wonder the sociologists of the Chicago School said: "Conflict is an opportunity to speak frankly."
Positive functions of intragroup conflicts. The traditional point of view not only of sociologists, but also of psychologists who worked with groups, was that conflicts are a negative phenomenon for the group and the task is to eliminate them. The tendency to seek social harmony in groups goes back to the "human relations" school: avoiding conflict, seen as a "social disease", and promoting "balance" or a "cooperative state". However, thanks to the conflict, the initial establishment of unity or its restoration, if it was previously violated, is possible. Of course, not every type of conflict will contribute to the strengthening of the group, just as not in all groups the conflict can realize such functions. The presence of these positive conflict potentials is determined by its type, as well as by the characteristics of the group.
Each group contains the potential for conflict due to the recurring rivalry between the demands of individuals. The nature of the group will significantly affect the characteristics of these conflicts, in particular, their functions. So, Koser believes that the closer the group, the more intense the conflict. If, nevertheless, a conflict arises in such a close-knit group, then it will proceed with particular intensity due to the “accumulated” discontent and full personal involvement, which is characteristic of a group with close ties. Conflict in groups of this type will threaten their very foundations and therefore be destructive.
The nature of the group's relations with the external environment will also be essential for intra-group conflict. Thus, groups that are in a state of more or less constant confrontation with other groups will tend to involve their members more personally in common activities and to suppress deviations from group unity and discord. Greater tolerance for intra-group conflicts will be characteristic of groups whose relations with the external environment are more balanced.
Internal conflict also serves as a means of identifying conflicting interests among members of the group and thereby contributes to the possibility of a new agreement, ensuring the restoration of the necessary balance.
Conflicts often lead to the creation of associations and coalitions within groups, which ensures interaction between members of the entire association, reduces isolation, and creates the ground for the implementation of individual activity of group members.
In general, pointing out the positive possibilities of conflict in flexible social structures, L. Koser calls it the most important stabilizing mechanism, the mechanism for adapting norms to new conditions.
Conflict is an opportunity to relieve tension, to "heal" relationships. The function of stress relief, "healing" of relationships, which the conflict potentially contains, can be purposefully used in pedagogical practice. For example, A. S. Makarenko considered conflict as a pedagogical means of influencing people's relations.
Interestingly, R. May considers it possible to use the same method of intensifying experiences to initiate a beneficial crisis in psychotherapeutic practice. He writes about how he once received an extremely emotional letter from a young man who asked him for help: “In my reply letter, I set out to exacerbate his feelings to the utmost and cause a crisis. I wrote that he was accustomed to his position as a spoiled child, who was always toyed with, and now in his suffering there is nothing but self-pity and a complete lack of courage to cope with the situation. I deliberately did not leave any loophole to save the prestige of his "I". May believes, judging by the response, that his goal was achieved and led to constructive steps.
Emphasizing the potential positive possibilities of conflict should not make us forget about its likely destructive role in the life of the individual. It can be considered a generally accepted idea not only of the positive significance of the effective resolution and overcoming of emerging intrapersonal crises, conflicts, contradictions by a person, but also of the negative, and even destructive influence that their failure to overcome can have on the development of a healthy personality. We can evaluate a person’s exit from a conflict or crisis as productive if, as a result, he really “frees himself” from the problem that gave rise to him in such a way that the experience makes him more mature, psychologically adequate and integrated.
The emotional experience of a crisis situation, no matter how strong it may be, does not in itself lead to overcoming it. In the same way, analyzing a situation, thinking about it, only leads to a better understanding of it. The real problem lies in the creation of a new meaning, in “meaning generation”, “meaning-building”, when the result of the inner work of a person to overcome, live critical life situations are changes in his inner subjective world - gaining a new meaning, a new value attitude, restoring peace of mind and etc.
On the contrary, those strategies that, in essence, are psychologically ineffective, no matter how the individual evaluates them, actually turn out to be aimed at weakening, mitigating the severity of the crisis experienced and the emotional states that accompany it. If we recall the previously used medical analogy, we can say that in the first case, a person, having felt pain, tries to find out its cause and cope with it by curing the disease, and in the second case, he simply takes pills, trying to drown out the discomfort.
The general practical position can be expressed by the words of R. May already quoted: "...Our task is to turn destructive conflicts into constructive ones."
Natalia Grishina
According to Elitarium
- Psychology: personality and business
Keywords:
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Each conflict can play both a positive and a negative role. The duality of the nature of the conflict lies in the peculiarities of its influence on the life and activities of the warring parties. In addition, at different stages of its development, the same conflict can take on both constructive and destructive colors.
From the point of view of the conflicting parties the following positive aspects can be identified in the conflict.
1. The conflict can fully or partially neutralize organizational contradictions caused by shortcomings in the organization of activities, poor management, and inconsistency of the employee's qualifications with the duties performed. The result is the resolution of approximately 65% of such contradictions.
2. The result of the conflict may be a more objective assessment of the socio-psychological qualities of the people involved in the conflict. Ways of confrontation show the value orientations of the participants in the conflict, their true motives, demonstrate the degree of their psychological stability and stress resistance. Conflict helps to manifest both negative and positive traits of a person. About 10-15% of conflicts after their end improve relations between opponents.
3. Participation in the conflict allows you to reduce the degree of psychological tension among the warring parties. The actions of opponents, which are often accompanied by strong emotional reactions, can reduce the intensity of subsequent negative emotions. So, for example, the phenomenon of catharsis arises, which means the release of accumulated negative energy, which exerted strong pressure on a person.
4. Conflict interaction can become an impetus for personal development, improvement of interpersonal relationships. Constructive conflict resolution allows a person to form a positive experience of acting in conflict situations, gain effective interaction skills, and improve their social status.
5. The result of the conflict may be an increase in the individual effectiveness of the employee. For example, for managers, the result of a conflict in 28% of cases is an increase in the quality of activity, and a decrease is observed in 17% of cases. For ordinary workers, on the contrary, as a result of the conflict, the quality of their work often deteriorates, because they fail to achieve the goals they pursued in the conflict.
6. A conflict can help increase the authority of one of the parties if, during the conflict, it pursued goals that were assessed as fair by colleagues at work. This happens 4 times more often than if the side advocates goals that are considered dubious.
7. The conflict can serve as a tool for the socialization of the individual, significantly increase the self-esteem of the individual.
When evaluating each conflict, one should take into account the impact that it has on the macro- and microenvironment. In addition to the opponents involved in the conflict, it has a direct impact on the entire group. The degree of conflict is directly proportional to the strength of the relationship between the opponent and the group, the social status of the warring parties, and the intensity of their conflict countermeasures. In this case, the following positive aspects of the conflict are distinguished:
- serves as a tool that stimulates the social activity of a small group or community (innovation conflict);
- shows the relevance of some unresolved problems;
- contributes to the identification of the prevailing public opinion;
- can serve to form new (and more favorable) conditions for the functioning of the organization;
- sometimes it becomes an important factor in rallying a social group (and even an entire nation).
