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In its primary [[meaning]], contradiction is [[The Act|the act ]] of contradicting, of opposing oneself to someone by saying the opposite of whatever he or she says. The term is used in [[mathematics]] and [[philosophy]]. In [[mathematical]] [[logic]], a contradiction is a [[statement]] whose [[truth]] function has only one [[value]]: [[false]]. In philosophy it is the relation that [[exists]] between the [[affirmation]] and the [[negation]] of a proposition. A term that embodies incompatible (contrary or contradictory) elements is also called a contradiction.
Contradicting the fears and [[feelings]] of a [[patient]] under [[hypnosis]] was the first therapeutic [[intervention]] that [[Freud]] described in his early article on "A [[Case]] of Successful [[Treatment]] by [[Hypnotism]]" (1892-93a). He showed that the etiology of the [[symptom]] depended on "antithetic [[ideas]]" (p. 121) opposed to the [[individual]]'s intentions. The [[formal]] element in the etiology was thus contradiction, which also applied to [[repression]]: "For these [[patients]] whom I analysed had enjoyed [[good]] [[mental]] health up to the [[moment]] at which an occurrence of incompatibility took [[place]] in their ideational life—that is to say, until their ego was faced with an [[experience]], an [[idea]] or a [[feeling]] which aroused such a distressing [[affect]] that the [[subject]] decided to forget [[about]] it because he had no confidence in his [[power]] to resolve the contradiction between that incompatible idea and his ego by means of [[thought]]-[[activity]]" (Freud 1894a, p. 47).
The nucleus of the [[Ucs.]] consists . . . of wishful impulses. These [[instinctual]] impulses are co-ordinate with one [[another]], [[exist]] side by side without [[being]] influenced by one another, and are exempt from mutual contradiction. When two wishful impulses whose aims must appear to us incompatible become simultaneously [[active]], the two impulses do not diminish each other or cancel each other out, but combine to form an intermediate aim, a compromise. There are in this [[system]] no negation, no [[doubt]], no degrees of [[certainty]]: all this is only introduced by the [[work]] of the [[censorship]] between the Ucs. and the Pcs. Negation is a [[substitute]], at a higher level, for repression" (Freud, 1915e, pp.186-187).
Freud used similar [[language]] apropos of [[The Id|the id]], adding that "The [[logical]] laws of thought do not apply to the id, and this is [[true]] above all of the law of contradiction" (1933a [1932], p. 73). [[Ambivalence]] is the final [[dynamic]] factor necessary for [[understanding]] the ubiquity of contradiction in the expression of [[psychic]] [[processes]].
Thus, all products of the unconscious—dreams, slips, [[jokes]], symptoms—simply disregard "the [[category]] of contraries and contradictories. ...Dreams feel themselves at liberty, moreover, to [[represent]] any element by its wishful contrary; so that there is no way of deciding, at first glance, whether any element that admits of a contrary is [[present]] in the dream-thoughts as a positive or as a [[negative]]" (Freud, 1900a, p. 318). Freud compared these psychic creations to the antithetical [[meanings]] of [[primal]] [[words]] (1910e), which he again [[analyzed]] in his study of taboos (1912-1913), and then in his essay on "The [[Uncanny]]" (1919h). The term "compromise [[formation]]," a feature of all defenses, demonstrates the extension of contradiction across the [[whole]] of mental [[life]].
