A personality clash occurs when two (or more) people find themselves in conflict not over a particular issue or incident, but due to a fundamental incompatibility in their personalities, their approaches to things, or their style of life. A personality clash may occur in work-related, school-related, family-related, or social situations.

Types

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of Carl Jung publications, over 20 books, illustrator, and corr ...

saw the polarity of

extraversion and introversion Extraversion and introversion are a central trait theory, trait dimension in human personality psychology, personality theory. The terms were introduced into psychology by Carl Jung, though both the popular understanding and current psychologic ...

as a major potential cause of personality conflicts in everyday life, as well as underlying many past intellectual and philosophical disputes. He also opposed thinking and feeling types, intuitive and sensation types, as potential sources of misunderstanding between people; while other typologies can and have been developed since.

In the workplace

The issue of personality clashes in the workplace is controversial. According to the Australian government, the two types of workplace conflicts are when people's ideas, decisions or actions relating directly to the job are in opposition, or when two people just don't get along. Turner and Weed argue that in a conflict situation, don’t ask who, ask what and why. Managers should avoid blaming interpersonal conflicts on personality clashes. Such a tactic is an excuse to avoid addressing the real causes of conflict, and the department’s performance will suffer as a result. Managers must be able to recognize the signs of conflict behaviors and deal with the conflict in a forthright fashion. Approaching conflicts as opportunities to improve departmental policies and operations rather as ailments to be eradicated or ignored will result in a more productive work force and greater departmental efficiency. However, in order to avoid recognizing harsher business bullying situations, employers are more likely to refer to these actions as a personality clash.

In therapy

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

thought a harmonious match of therapist and patient was essential for psychotherapy; but subsequent experience has demonstrated that success can follow even where there is an underlying personality clash.

Neville Symington Neville Symington (3 July 1937 - 3 December 2019) was a member of the Middle Group of British Psychoanalysts which argues that the primary motivation of the child is object-seeking rather than drive gratification. He published a number of books ...

indeed saw a patient's willingness to proceed with therapy, ''despite'' her dislike of him, as a positive sign of health, and as a beginning repudiation of her

narcissism Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism, named after the Greek mythological figure ''Narcissus'', has evolv ...

Remedies

Some suggest that the only answer to a personality clash is the folk remedy of distancing - reducing contact with the clashing personality involved. Other recommendations are to focus on the positives in the other person, and to examine one's own psychodynamics for clues as to why one is finding them so difficult - perhaps due to a

projection Projection or projections may refer to: Physics * Projection (physics), the action/process of light, heat, or sound reflecting from a surface to another in a different direction * The display of images by a projector Optics, graphics, and carto ...

of some unacknowledged part of one's own personality.

Howard Gardner Howard Earl Gardner (born July 11, 1943) is an American developmental psychologist and the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Research Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University. He was a founding member of Harvard Project Zero in 1967 ...

saw a major part of what he called interpersonal intelligence as the ability to mediate and resolve such personality clashes from the outside.

Examples

Actual

* Circumstances conspired to produce a painful personality clash between the ordered, cerebral, emotionally contained A. J. P. Taylor, and the spendthrift, bohemian, expansive

Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer, whose works include the poems " Do not go gentle into that good night" and " And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Un ...

. * The clash between the cautious, moderate Harley and the mercurial, extremist Bolingbroke at the close of Queen Anne's reign did much to usher in the long Whig ascendency that followed. * The personality clash between

Henry Tizard Sir Henry Thomas Tizard (23 August 1885 – 9 October 1959) was an English chemist, inventor and Rector of Imperial College, who developed the modern "octane rating" used to classify petrol, helped develop radar in World War II, and led the fir ...

and

Frederick Lindemann Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell, ( ; 5 April 18863 July 1957) was a British physicist who was prime scientific adviser to Winston Churchill in World War II. He was involved in the development of radar and infra-red guidan ...

had adverse effects on the Allied conduct of World War Two.

Literary

* C. P. Snow in his semi-autobiographical novel on the corridors of power described caballing with someone whose temperament "clashed right at the roots with mine: even if he was not being offensive, he would have tempted me to say something hard. But I was doing a job, and I couldn't afford luxuries, certainly not the luxury of being myself".C. P. Snow, ''Corridors of Power'' (1975) p. 132

References

External links

Philip Landau, 'When personalities clash'

'Workplace conflict'
{{Workplace Personality Organizational conflict