How to Resolve Conflict in Organizations

1People Models and People Procedure

Getting the angels to win

Freud was famous for approaching social conflict as an expression of forces “deeply ingrained within the individual. So deeply ingrained are they that it is common to refer to them as basic instincts. For Freud, human conflict fed on the innate aggressive drive lying within us all” (Schellenberg, 1996, p. 42). Pinker (2015) describes and rejects the same phenomenon as the Hydraulic Theory of Violence: that humans “harbour an inner drive toward aggression … which builds up inside us and must periodically be discharged” (p. 373).

Pinker also describes the fact that, in his view, humans get the better of this Hydraulic Theory in practice. He describes five inner demons that lead to conflict ...