Beyond Intractability: A Free Knowledge Base on More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict

Introduction: Morton Deutsch explains how pyschology affects conflicts at different levels from the interpersonal to the international.

This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).

Conflict Psychology
Morton Deutsch
E.L. Thorndike Professor and Director Emeritus of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Teachers College, Columbia University

Interviewed by
Julian Portilla
2003

I think psychologists emphasize what is an important emphasis; you have to understand that people have feelings, emotions, beliefs, prejudices and misconceptions. You have to understand what is involved psychologically for the person. People sometimes enter into a conflict with a lot of baggage from their personal history and that also has to be understood. Some people will have hang ups in relations with authority, going back to their relationship with their father, or mother.

Or they'll have hang ups in relations with their peers because of how they were treated by their schoolmates, and so on. And that's part of understanding some of the background echoes that go on in conflict. That's not only true, I think, at the personal level. People come into say, ethnic conflicts have identities also, and historical memories, and images of what a good future would be like. And that's brought into the conflict, which may be specific and narrow, but is surrounded by these other issues. You have to listen to those other issues, and help the parties deal with the specific issues, if they can deal with the specific issues without getting into the larger issues.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. -- Nelson Mandela

Featured Links
Organizations Making Noteworthy Contributions to Efforts to Promote More Constructive Conflict

Care Academy

Other Resources from
Beyond Intractability

Reconcilliation in Bosnia
How was peace acheived in Bosnia? Is the settlement working? Has reconciliation really been achieved?

Nobel Peace Prize Winners

Adolfo Perez Esquivel
Human rights leader, and 1980 Nobel Peace Laureate

Beyond Intractability Version IV
Copyright © 2003-2007 The Beyond Intractability Project
Beyond Intractability is a Registered Trademark of the University of Colorado
Project Acknowledgements

The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors
c/o Conflict Information Consortium (Formerly Conflict Research Consortium), University of Colorado
Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309
Phone: (303) 492-1635; Fax: (303) 492-2154; Contact