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Ambivalence

Psychology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Simultaneous conflicting feelings or attitudes toward someone or something.

Detailed Definition
Ambivalence captures the tension between opposing emotions—love and hate, desire and fear—within a single subject. Poets use this duality to explore complex relationships, moral dilemmas, or internal conflict, creating layered, nuanced portrayals of human experience that resist simplistic resolution.
Example
Example in poetry:
In John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the speaker is torn between admiration for eternal beauty and sorrow over its unattainability; In Sylvia Plath’s “Mirror,” ambivalence surfaces as the mirror reflects truth yet causes distress; In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” the speaker expresses both pride and doubt about his choice; In Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck,” the poet feels both fear and determination in confronting submerged truths; In William Blake’s “The Tyger,” awe and terror coexist in questioning divine creation; In Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” the tone shifts between casual acceptance and deep grief, revealing ambivalence toward loss.
Additional Notes
Ambivalence—simultaneous conflicting feelings—originates in psychoanalytic theory (Bleuler, Freud) and is crucial for nuanced emotional portrayal in poetry; it avoids binary emotion, enabling complexity (e.g., love/hate, desire/fear); poets like Keats (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”) and Bishop (“One Art”) master ambivalence through irony, understatement, or tonal shifts; for writers, embracing ambivalence can deepen authenticity; note its distinction from simple indecision—it’s coexisting opposites, not oscillation.
Also Known As
Mixed feelings Emotional conflict Ambivalent feelings
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