The main motive of speculative thinking, then, is the resolution of apparent contradictions continuously arising in experience. In particular, such contradictions arise when essentially opposed concepts are thought together as unities. This problem of the unity of opposites also arises in the case of the psyche, which is at once a unity and multiplicity: for it is one consciousness of innumerable representations (SW V: 307). Hence it is psychology’s task to explain how the ego can arise as one out of a multiplicity of conjoined or conflicting inner states.