Unconscious/ unintended behaviour during conflict 

This is the first of two articles.  In it we return to a topic first addressed in Vol. 1 No. 10 June 2005

If all communication were conscious and intentional conflict would be considerably easier to deal with.  It is not, and people generally make little allowance for the existence and the impact of the unconscious, with its intrusions into and distortion of our conscious and intended communication processes.  This is not surprising, as our mainstream culture does not encourage attention to the unconscious except in the areas of creativity and personality dysfunction.  However, the unconscious plays an important role in our health, relationships, development and communication, which are all affected by the way we handle conflict. 

During conflict, unconscious aspects of us frequently appear in our interactions as unintended, non-verbal communication and double messages that generate confusion in communication and distrust in relationships when they are not understood or at least allowances made for them.  This trouble is exacerbated by the fact that antagonists often notice the appearance of unconscious communication and double messages before we become aware of them and frequently use it to attack us or question our credibility.  We in turn can be quite disturbed by such awareness and often need supportive assistance to become more aware of our unconscious communication, to understand its purpose and meaning and to integrate it with our conscious communication.  As such, unconscious or unintended communication can play a significant role in helping us learn and grow through conflict.  Left unattended, it may play a significant role in complicating and escalating conflict. 

What is the unconscious?

We could say that whatever is outside our awareness is unconscious.  However, some things are easier to bring to our awareness and some so far outside it that we need help or are often unable to bring it to awareness.  For example, dreams, day-dreams and 'slips of the tongue' are the more familiar manifestations of the unconscious in everyday life some of which we may or may not notice or remember.  Projections and transference, though more difficult to bring to awareness, are manifestations of the unconscious at that are increasingly being recognised in popular culture rather than just obscure jargon of the analyst or psychologist.  There are many theories of the unconscious that the reader may wish to explore in greater depth.  Here we will use concepts from the work of Freud, Assagiolli, Jung and Mindell.

What is clear from these theorists is that we comprise several un-integrated parts rather than being a coherent whole as is usually expected of us or implied by our individual or social identity.  Some of these parts are within our conscious awareness and others are not.  At the risk of oversimplifying the unconscious, personal and collective, we will be concerned with a few key concepts here that help us make sense of unconscious or unintended communication. 

This unconscious psychological material leaks, seeks expression or emerges into consciousness in various ways.  When it does, it is usually experienced as 'foreign' by the conscious personality (ego) and, as such, constitutes a potential threat to our conscious self-concept or identity.  Our sense of identity is disturbed and we feel vulnerable if we stay open to this 'invasion' of our consciousness - if we explore the possibility that these repressed or emerging parts are actually part of us.  Often however, rather than feel the vulnerability and explore the experience our ego, in response, develops a defence, or 'edge' as Mindell terms it, to such contents just as our physical body defends itself against intrusion of anything it deems to be a threat to its health.  This splitting off of part of the self slows development, creates relationship and communication difficulties and may damage our psychological health.

While the imperative remains to maintain the integrity of the personality - the challenge is also to help the personality 'get over' the defensive edge and take responsibility for the unconscious or unintended communication.  This helps aids coherent and effective communication and helps integrate these new or repressed parts in an expanded, strengthened and more coherent identity.  Next we will explore how the unconscious appears in communication signals and affects relationships during conflict.

How the unconscious appears in our communication during conflict?

In conflict, as in other communication, we pay most attention to the verbal content and less to the non-verbal component.  This despite the fact that research suggests that over 80% of communication is non-verbal.  Clearly we notice the non-verbal even if at a subliminal level and this awareness qualifies and influences the meaning we take from the communication.  It is also clear that we marginalize or filter out a much greater proportion of the non-verbal.  However, in times of conflict or threat our awareness is on high alert and we pay far more attention to all aspects of the communication. 

During conflict, others are usually aware of signals from our unconscious before we become aware of them.  This is disconcerting especially when the relationship is fraught and we probably do not have much trust in our antagonist's viewpoint.  The emergence of the unconscious is disturbing enough but, when an antagonist reflects it back to us, it makes it doubly threatening and likely to provoke a defensive response.  We are more likely to trust our own awareness and to filter out or marginalize the significance of any feedback regarding unconscious communication from antagonists.  Any such feedback is probably experienced as an attack - part of an attempt to influence or change us that we will tend to resist.  We usually need the help of a third party who we feel supported by or at least trust to be neutral if we are to get to a position of being able to inquire into our unconscious communication, its meaning and intention.

We are concerned here with three key elements as far as communication is concerned - with:

Mindell gives the example of a couple arguing about the garbage - the wife screams 'take out the garbage' and gets a moody offended 'no' reply.   The primary process here is about the garbage but the screaming and the moodiness are secondary processes that require further inquiry.  Simply helping the wife to bring her anger to bear in a more useful way or the husband to communicate his hurt feelings more effectively may not be enough.  Who takes out the garbage is a complex issue and man and wife will need to unpack the underlying beliefs or cultural norms and meaning-making which shape their conflict to get to the roots of the tension and find a more constructive way of communicating.  Unfolding the secondary processes of screaming and moodiness will uncover further possibilities for self-development and mutual understanding as well as making recurrence less likely. 

* Mindell, A., (1987) The Dreambody in Relationships, Penguin Arkana

In the next issue we will focus on working with unconscious and unintended communication.