Behind every famous person lies a serious inner conflict.
It is what drives Elon Musk to set unrealistic, unattainable goals and sacrifice everything trying to reach them. It was Donald Trump’s inner pain that made him build the grandest buildings, call himself “the greatest president God ever created” and then try to wall America off. Without an inner struggle a writer cannot create a bestseller, and a director or actor cannot convey emotion, pain, passion or jealousy to an audience.
The secret of success.
From my practice I can state a hypothesis fairly precisely: people fall into two categories — those who use their inner pain to succeed, and those who suffer but keep putting out the fire inside and try to live an ordinary, unremarkable life.
In both cases the person thinks they are choosing their direction themselves — to borrow Dostoevsky, whether they are “a trembling creature or have the right”. But from the point of view of depth psychology it is a little more complicated. An inner conflict is an explosion. And it lies between our desires and our prohibitions. In childhood these are the external prohibitions of parents and adults, plus the limits of real life. Over the years they become inner prohibitions, which we might call conscience, for example, or any other rules we have accepted and follow consciously or unconsciously. Now imagine a forge.
A person who cannot control their prohibitions strikes at their desires with all their might. And nothing worthwhile can be made from the red-hot blank: it becomes a lump of shapeless, lifeless metal. But if you learn to use your limits and prohibitions, the metal takes shape and comes to life.
That is why I tell all my clients:
“Don’t be afraid of your desires — that is where all the energy is. It is by working with your inner conflict and understanding your prohibitions that this energy can be used to achieve your boldest goals.”
How to become successful?
So it doesn’t always make sense to go to a psychologist just to get rid of an inner conflict. It is much more important to try, together with a specialist, to use this vast inner resource to fulfil your most cherished dreams. Your own dreams — from financial success, vivid creative work, recognition and scientific discoveries to feeling at ease under stress and not running away from problems.
As long as an inner conflict lives within us, we are building the path of a legend: a struggle between desires and fears. When one of them wins, the path of the legend breaks off. Only a corpse has no desires, fears or emotions.
I think many of us have followed Harry Potter’s story.
The boy wizard makes it easy to explain how an inner conflict raises a person onto a pedestal — and how getting rid of it makes life dull and of no interest to anyone.
My favourite scene in Harry Potter is the final battle for Hogwarts.
— It’s good to see you, Potter.
— How much time do you need?
— As much as possible.
— Go! I’ll secure the school.
— …
— I’ve always wanted to use that spell.
Glowing beams burst into the dark sky and form a dome that wraps around the castle.
Imagine that our psyche is arranged magically, like the defences of Hogwarts. There is a real or imagined external threat, and there are our real or imagined inner fears. Under the dome, preparations are under way to repel the enemy’s attack, and at the same time the search continues for the Horcruxes whose destruction will bring victory. And there is also a magical dome of psychological defences, completely invisible to the naked eye. It is so cleverly made that from beneath it we cannot attack the enemy, and the enemy cannot attack us — until the barrier falls.
This is exactly how the human psyche works. Harry, sitting in his cot, was a one-year-old baby. When his parents were killed, he saw everything. His mother saved him with her love, shielding him. But his childhood trauma left more than a physical mark — the scar on his forehead. It haunted him unconsciously all his life. He himself became a Horcrux.
A psychological trauma is like a scar on the soul.
Somewhere deep inside it forever aches and itches. And at the decisive moment, when Hogwarts is under attack, Harry realises that he is part of the toxic force that wants to kill him. And to win, he must sacrifice himself. Yes, he is afraid! How can you let an inseparable part of yourself be killed? But it is only by getting rid of it that he can stop suffering and stop being exposed to toxic attack in the future.
It was the splinter of inner conflict that itched all those years and unconsciously led the boy wizard along the path of a legend. All his suffering, torment, successes and achievements were tied to resolving that inner conflict. As soon as the problem was solved and the inner splinter and the outer trigger were destroyed, his life became ordinary and dull.
There is no point writing books or making films about that life. And imagine if Harry Potter had gone to a child psychologist in his first year at Hogwarts because he lived with guardians and had lost his parents in early childhood. Long work might have freed him from his inner conflict. But his path would never have become the path of a legend.
I’ll say it again: behind every famous and successful person, whatever they do, lies a serious inner conflict. Presidents, actors, writers, Olympic champions, Nobel laureates, even bloggers and TikTokers resolve their own inner conflicts through their achievements, trying to cope with unbearable pain.
There is a certain magic in this, and it is within us.
Somewhere deep inside.
Psychologist, MSc in Psychology · 7 years in practice
Editor-in-Chief of PSY.one.
