Differences in psychodynamic conflicts between healthy adolescents and adolescent patients: Results with the conflict questionnaire

Abstract Unconscious conflicts are characterized as temporally persistent, contradictory perspectives of feelings and experiences, which the individual tries to integrate by using an active or passive mode. According to OPD-CA, seven conflict issues can be measured: Closeness versus Distance, Submission versus Control, Taking care of oneself versus Being cared for, Self-worth conflict, Guilt conflict, Oedipal conflict, and an Identity conflict. This study investigates one of the premises of the OPD-CA, that unconscious conflicts occur in healthy children and adolescents just as they do in patients of the same age, but to a much larger extent in patients, so that they downright may lead to symptoms. 299 healthy adolescents and 283 patients (mean age 17.10, SD = 1.94) were examined by using the self-rating of the conflict questionnaire (OPD-CA-CQ). The results indeed show significantly higher conflict levels in the clinical group with a comparable ranking of the most important conflicts in both samples. Of note, the passive processing mode prevailed in both groups. Conceptually, this signifies, that topics such as loyalty towards parents, insecurity, and disorientation with regard to identity and sexuality concern all youth but impair the patient much more than the healthy youth. In conclusion, one of the premises of the conflict axis of the OPD-CA that the topics occur in all adolescents with substantially higher mean levels in the clinical group was confirmed.