Literary notes about ambivalence (AI summary)
In literature, ambivalence often serves as a nuanced marker of internal conflict and the coexistence of opposing emotions. Writers depict characters caught between contradictory desires or beliefs, as when a person remains paralyzed by indecision or experiences a tension between dependency and responsibility [1, 2, 3]. In psychoanalytic texts, the term is frequently employed to chart the intricate dynamics underlying human relationships and conflicts—the interplay of attraction and repulsion—while also providing a framework for understanding broader cultural or ideological dilemmas [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. Furthermore, authors invoke ambivalence to explore the intellectual and emotional tension that colors personal transformation and critical judgment, imbuing their narratives with a layered, reflective quality [12, 13, 14, 15, 16].
- He just sat there on the floor near some rolled-up blankets in incessant dazed ambivalence until she at last told him to unpack.
— from Tokyo to Tijuana: Gabriele Departing America by Steven David Justin Sills - What was this sudden ambivalence she felt toward him?
— from Caribbee by Thomas Hoover - He kept debating whether he should stay or go and found himself, due to his indecisiveness, floundering in desperate ambivalence.
— from An Apostate: Nawin of Thais by Steven David Justin Sills - I have, in the course of these discussions, unfortunately not been in a position to tell you more about this emotional ambivalence.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud - With the decline of this ambivalence the taboo, as the compromise symptom of the ambivalent conflict, also slowly disappeared.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud - It is certainly noticeable that the ambivalence attached to the father complex also continues in totemism and in religions in general.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud - If this psychological factor did not exist the ambivalence could neither maintain itself so long nor lead to such subsequent manifestations.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud - But now also the psychological fatality of ambivalence demands its rights.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud - Only one thing, namely, the propensity to arouse the ambivalence of man and to tempt him to violate the prohibition.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud - On the contrary, the conflict was continued in reference to the object to which displacement has been made and to which also the ambivalence spreads.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud - A change in the relations of the fundamental ambivalence can be the only reason why the prohibition no longer appears in the form of a taboo.
— from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud - But the ambivalence towards the West is still there.
— from The Belgian Curtain: Europe after Communism by Samuel Vaknin - The first term I began to intellectually play with was "ambivalence."
— from Humanistic Nursing by Loretta T. Zderad - Now, I would attribute my selection of "ambivalence" to my then existing ambivalence about conceptualizing a synthetic construct.
— from Humanistic Nursing by Loretta T. Zderad - 14 More important, the play between scorn and praise reflects the ambivalence which colors contemporary accounts of Johnson.
— from A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) by John Courtenay - Struggling with the term "ambivalence" involved and interested me in concept development.
— from Humanistic Nursing by Loretta T. Zderad
