NON PSICOLOGICA

Sito di contenuti sul funzionamento

della mente umana

Conflictuality

(By Alberto Bonizzato – Behavioral Coach)

When we speak of conflictuality, we tend to immediately envision an overt clash between two individuals over a specific dispute. However, according to the Perspective of Observation of Mind Mechanics (POMM), conflict is first and foremost an energetic phenomenon that can either remain locked within the subject (internal conflict) or explode outward (extroverted conflict).

It is a necessary premise that the dynamics of aggression evolve into explicit forms of conflict predominantly when the psychic structure is dominated by the projective and representative condition of a victimistic matrix.

To comprehend why we engage in clashes, we must observe what occurs "under the hood" of our mind. Everything originates from a highly primitive biological drive. When our emotional tension (arousal) breaches a specific critical threshold, our limbic brain—the most instinctual apparatus—issues an immediate command to the somatic body: prepare for fight or flight. It is a reaction of pure survival.

In this context, the analysis focuses strictly on the behavioral and communicative kinetics of the phenomenon, temporarily setting aside the underlying engine—meaning the projective and cultural architecture that constitutes its genesis.

      [TRANSGENERATIONAL FAMILIAL MATRIX]

       (Victimistic / Projective Setup)

│

▼

       [CRITICAL METABOLIC AROUSAL SPIKE]

        (Limbic Command: Fight or Flight)

│

┌──────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┐

▼                                                    ▼

   [INTERNAL CONFLICT]                                   [EXTROVERTED CONFLICT]

- Subterranean Tension (Anxiety)                     - Projective Target (Blame)

- "Wanting" Swallowed by "Duty"                      - Destructive Moralization Loops

- Somatization / Helplessness                        - External Locus of Control

The Biological Spectrum: The Great Divide Between Humans and Animals

Under a biological profile, when arousal breaches a specific critical threshold, the Limbic System predisposes the organism to the dichotomous reaction of fight or flight.

An animal, when confronted with an environmental threat or a rival, attacks or flees without secondary computations. Within the human being, however, this primordial drive cannot be smoothly executed; it collides with opposing forces that generate a literal mental gridlock. The Perspective of Observation of Mind Mechanics (POMM) identifies this gridlock across four principal vectors which the mind must manage simultaneously:

1. The Instinctive Emotional Drive: The immediate activation of primary emotions (the visceral impulse to strike or escape).

2. Emotional Reactivity: The preset behavioral tracks inherited from the primary family unit (projective drives deriving from the familial Emotional Model).

3. Socio-Cultural Pressures: The collective formatting that dictates what is considered "right," "appropriate," or "normal" to execute.

4. Personal Objectives and Intentions: What the individual consciously or unconsciously desires to achieve within that specific coordinate.

The systemic misalignment between these heterogeneous components—specifically the discrepancy between the raw limbic command and the abstract cultural constraint—produces an exponential escalation in the perception of helplessness.

It is precisely this condition of functional stalemate that translates into conflictuality, entirely independent of the manifest object that triggered the dispute. Instinct may dictate an explosive scream, yet familial conditioning or social protocols mandate calmness and composure.

Trapped in this misalignment, the individual ends up feeling imprisoned and impotent: they can neither gratify their biology nor satisfy their rationality. It is this exact sensation of helplessness that feeds the conflictual matrix.

In synthesis, conflictuality is never the output of a deliberate choice, but the mechanical result of friction between incompatible apparatuses: a biological system programmed for immediate, reactive survival, and a cognitive-social system that enforces an abstract hyper-mediation. When this mediation fails to integrate the emotional drive, the accumulated metabolic tension discharges through the dynamism of conflict, validating the reactive, non-resolutive nature of the victimistic mask.

Direct Aggression vs. Conflictual Aggression

To map the fine mechanics of this phenomenon, POMM enforces a sharp distinction between direct aggression and conflictual aggression. Although they may appear visually identical to an external observer, their mechanical genesis is completely distinct, as it responds to different balances between the instinctual system and the internal control structures.

Aggression as a Functional Response

Within mind mechanics, pure aggression can be considered a direct, linear output of an emotional state. In this scenario, the individual operates in a state of functional equilibrium: they activate a stimulus, project it as an immediate threat, and execute a specular kinetic action designed to neutralize it.

Within this dynamic, there is zero internal "friction." The action is the direct mirror response to the projection; it is a limbic mechanic that flows without obstruction, aimed at the instantaneous restoration of homeostasis.

Conflictual Aggression: The Short Circuit with the Superego

Conflictuality, conversely, does not originate from external reality, but from friction between opposing internal instances. Here, the emotional drive (arousal) cannot transform into a fluid action because it hits the barrier of the Superego.

The rules, normative constraints, and moral codes absorbed during familial imprinting operate as an incoherent inhibitor. This collision establishes an internal opposition wherein:

・ One vector of the projections drives toward the reactive action (attack).

・ Another vector activates immediate inhibitory blocks (guilt or the social norm).

The output of this structural collision is a distorted aggression. The individual ceases to operate as a functional actor and mutates into a subject trapped in an exhausting alternation between a desire for retaliation and the paralysis of guilt.

The Matrix of the Emotional Model: Learned Helplessness

It is critical to emphasize that these conflictual activities are virtually never correlated with the objective external reality of the present moment. They erupt from the preset postures of the familial Emotional Model: automated behavioral tracks that the individual traverses blindly.

When these postures activate, the subject slips into the condition of an impotent victim. In this state, the person does not fight against an actual real-world obstacle, but against their own structural incapacity to harmonize biological drives with the dogmatic demands of the Superego. Extroverted conflictuality, therefore, is merely the visible symptom of a mechanical inability to process this internal tension, converting systemic helplessness into a cyclical, non-resolutive rage.

Within a collective context saturated by infinite regulations and codes of conduct, the individual undergoes a decisive modulation in the expression of their Emotional Model's drives. This phenomenon produces a specific modulation of self-evaluation structures: social pressure does not limit itself to directing behavior, but intervenes directly upon the perception of one's own value and the perceived adequacy of one's emotional responses.

To map this modulation, let us analyze a common relational dynamic. Imagine an individual who, driven by an internal necessity for social acceptance, decides to deploy a consolidated strategy from their experiential archive: telling a joke to integrate into a group. However, at the exact moment of execution, they register a "serious" atmosphere among those present...

The Mechanics of Projection and Inhibition

Within this scenario, POMM isolates three foundational mechanical phases that illustrate the distortion between reality and representation:

1. The Projection of the Need: The frantic necessity to extract acceptance in that exact instant stems entirely from an internal projection. The limbic system artificially elevates the importance of a social approval signal, transforming it into a metric of psychic survival, whereas in objective terms, that signal remains completely insignificant within the overall economy of the subject's existence.

2. The Interference of the Superego: The internalized normative structures (the Superego) operate as sensors scanning the environment. In this case, they project the label of "excessive seriousness" onto the group. This interpretation is not necessarily an objective data point, but an anticipatory evaluation anchored upon personal fears and moral codes.

3. The Short Circuit and the "Mental Film": Under the percussive pressure of this evaluation, the individual opts for the repression of their original drive. They produce what we define as a "complete mental film": they decide that the joke would be inappropriate without ever verifying it empirically. By blocking the action, they preclude the possibility of discovering whether the group would have actually welcomed the moment of levity.

Moral Conflict and Functional Distress

The output of this modulation is the birth of an internal conflict. The repression of a drive is never a neutral act; it generates a specific level of distress that the organism registers as systemic tension. The perceived "seriousness" of the group activates a moral connotation: the impulse to be humorous is labeled as a "wrong choice" or an inappropriate action.

Through this mechanic, the projective dynamic converts a simple environmental adaptation into a moral judgment on the self. The individual does not merely refrain from telling the joke; they perceive themselves as potentially inadequate, experiencing systemic distress and a sense of guilt for having merely conceived an action that their Superego judged to be "outside the norm."

It is precisely within this friction between the expressive need of the Emotional Model and the barrier of social regulations that the helplessness of the subject crystallizes—trapped in an interpreted reality that replaces and negates objective reality.

The interaction between biological drives and social barriers produces a systematic distortion of projective activity. When the internal system disconnects from objective reality, the individual loses the capacity to calibrate their evaluative-reactive activity: environmental signals are decoded exclusively through the warped lens of judgment, rejection, or misunderstanding.

In this state, the reaction loses all proportionality relative to the perceived "wrong." In a culture where morals (the external code) override ethics (internal coherence), the individual alters their evaluative compass: they oscillate between the repression of healthy, necessary reactions and the sudden explosion of exasperated responses, which are the raw fruit of accumulated frustrations.

In synthesis, we identify the primary emotional dynamics as "Wanting" (the kinetic drive of Arousal) and the constraints of the social Superego as "Duty." The perpetual antagonism between these two forces drags the person into a conflictual state, where reality is flattened into symbolic representations and defensive masks.

Internal Conflictuality: The Silent Pressure

Internal conflictuality feeds upon this antagonism when "Wanting" and "Duty" fail to find an operational channel of discharge toward the outside. The tension remains hijacked within the individual because one of the two vectors is rendered profoundly non-conscious or is registered as strictly prohibited by the Emotional Model (Internal Locus of Control). This configuration is the architectural blueprint of anxiety dynamics.

In these cases, the authentic "Wanting" is submerged and rendered invisible by the seductive mechanisms of "Duty," which are mistakenly embraced as personal desire. This is the performance dynamic: the individual runs to satisfy an external standard, fully convinced they are pursuing their own ambition.

Similarly, within the sexual sphere, "Duty" is frequently confounded with "Wanting." The person identifies pleasure in the execution of a specific role (the representation of what one "ought" to be in bed or within the relationship), but over time, that role mutates into an exhausting prison. The resulting internal conflict is extraordinarily difficult to decode because the mask of performance conceals the active negation of the Self.

Ultimately, anxiety, guilt, and depression are nothing more than specialized sequences of apprehension that paralyze the capacity to react, freezing the individual into a permanent victimistic posture.

Extroverted Conflictuality: The Hunt for the Culprit

In stark contrast to the internal matrix, extroverted conflictuality locates an external target upon which to project its internal tension. The mechanical architecture of the conflict remains entirely identical, but the elements of "Duty" are projected onto explicit external factors that become the absolute scapegoat for the subject's distress (External Locus of Control).

A classic example is the focalization of an environment as "stressful." In this configuration, anxiety is no longer processed as an undefined internal signal; it is bound to precise external triggers or to specific individuals identified as the "culprits."

What remains totally non-conscious to the subject is the active negation they are executing toward their own original volition. Under a communicative profile, this typology of conflict is blatant; the individual discharges their malaise through:

・ Metabolic alterations and somatizations: The body screaming what the mouth refuses to make explicit.

・ Irascibility and touchiness: Extreme, volatile reactivity to minimal environmental stimuli.

・ Explicit aggressions: Dysfunctional, blind attempts to forcefully restore homeostasis.

Operational Synthesis

The threshold dividing internal and extroverted conflictuality is highly fluid; the two orientations can alternate cyclically throughout a person's life trajectory. However, within the POMM framework, these dynamics must be treated purely as communicative signals, never as the core of the problem.

Treating anxiety or conflict as the primary "nucleus" to be resolved constitutes a distorting error of perspective: they are merely the visible effects of an invisible misalignment.

Only an observer technically trained to decode the morphology of projective dynamisms can trace the path backward from the symptom (conflictuality) to the authentic cause: the structural fracture between the Emotional Model and objective reality.