Alliance for Mystical Pragmatics

Alliance for Mystical Pragmatics

Harmonizing Evolutionary Convergence

Glossary Menus

ambivalence

Ambivalence was coined to mean ‘the coexistence in one person of contradictory emotions or attitudes, such as love and hatred, towards a person or thing’. Such ambivalent feelings can feel very uncomfortable, leading to indecision and so-called weakness as the opposites flip-flop in the mind. One way of dealing with ambivalence is to repress one or other of these opposites, pushing it into the unconscious, where it nevertheless continues to influence behaviour unless brought to the surface and carefully examined in the brilliant light of Consciousness.

Another is to recognize that ambivalence is an expression of the inherent duality of the relativistic world of form, which can only be fully reconciled in Ineffable, Nondual Wholeness, recognizing that tensions that arise from such incompatibilities are just illusions.

Etymology

German Ambivalenz, coined by Eugen Bleuler in 1910/11 from Latin ambi- ‘both, in two ways’, from PIE base *ambhi- ‘around’, probably from *ant-bhi ‘from both sides’ and valentia ‘strength, vigour’, from valēre ‘to be worth, be strong’, from PIE base *wal- ‘to be strong’ also root of value, valiant, valid, and invalid.

Common ancestor(s):