Inner dialectic conflict in characters and narratives

Based on Vittorio F. Guidano’s analysis of personal meaning organizations, we propose that each type of psychological structure is underpinned by certain inner dialectic conflict. This psychological approach seems useful as a theoretical guideline to analyze and create characters and narratives. The psychological structure (an obsessive-compulsive one) can be expressed through the main character (and his backstory) as in the movie Kinsey (Condon). It can also be depicted in the narrative, which becomes an arena of projected inner dialectic conflicts on the realm of that same psychological structure (as in David Fincher’s The Game). “But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeketh to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthward, downward, into the dark and deep – into the evil.” (Nietzsche 48). The villain emerges when we glorify ourselves.