Duplicity

Summary

In this paper I have attempted to define duplicity and differentiate it from neurosis and conflict. I have attemped to distinguish duplicity as maneuver and duplicity as strategy, and to indicate the forms duplicity takes in various phases of the analytic work, depending on the extent to which the ratio of energy investment favors the pride or real self system. I have done this to mitigate the deleterious effects of the generally helf, one-sided, destructive meanings attributed to the term duplicity, and to do so by expanding and revising the concept to indicate the general existence and detailed manifestations of moral dividedness, or moral imperfection. With such a tolerant, constructive understanding of this moral issue, unnecessary pain can be mitigated and more energies made available for constructive discontentment with, and work on, this problem in ourselves, whether in self-analysis or in psychoanalytic therapy.