aggression

schizophrenia

trivia

arrogance

confidence

pride

comfort zone

is a basic drive which natural selection has long favored so we have a large capacity for aggression, inherited from our ancestors, but lack opportunities to work it off in the modern world.

aggression is firmly directed towards others, vwe may get more help from Konrad Lorenz, who won the Nobel Prize in 1973 for his work on animal behavior. In his book known in English as On Aggression, but originally entitled Das sogenannte Bose, Lorenz argues that aggression is older than love: reptiles show aggression, but no affection towards each other. His concern is not with predation-attacks on other species-but with aggression between members of the same species. It is a means of establishing distance and hierarchy. The aggressive individual intimidates those who are below him in the pecking order. It can also be a way of defending one's territory, the spatial distance that must be preserved in order to ensure an adequate food supply. Aggression is therefore a basic drive, also found in humans. In the past, natural selection favored aggressive individuals. Hence we now have a large capacity for aggression, inherited from our ancestors, but lack opportunities to work it off. This is Lorenz's explanation for the frequency of violence in the modern world.

is a biologically rooted instinctive urge that promotes preservation of the self. If not expressed, aggressive energy accumulates and exerts increasing pressure on the organism for satisfaction.

According to Freud, aggression is a biologically rooted instinctive urge that promotes preservation of the self. In the absence of aggressive expression, aggressive energy accumulates and exerts increasing pressure on the organism for satisfaction.

is a need to overcome opposition forcefully, to fight, to revenge an injury, to attack or kill another, to punish another.

According to Murray, it is a need to overcome opposition forcefully, to fight, to revenge an injury, to attack or kill another, to punish another.

is a nonhostile, nondestructive, constructive energy at the service of development, differentiation, mastery, object relations, and the maintenance of a satisfactory balance between the self and the environment.

In summary, aggression is for Winnicott a non-hostile, nondestructive activity that manifests itself in four modes: (1) as a pleasurable source of self-assertion and exploration of the world... (2) as a means to obtain libidinal satisfaction from the object... (3) as a signal behavior to indicate the object's failure to respond to object related or environmental needs... and (4) as a means by which a self (a 'Me') can be developmentally established in relation to an environment of objects who are differentiated from the self. Aggression is a constructive energy at the service of development, differentiation, mastery, object relations, and the maintenance of a satisfactory balance between the self and the environment.

is a primary drive (rather than the outcome of conflicting drives) that is not grounded in goal attainment. Rather its sole purpose is to release tension by means of a kind of breaking-up or a kind of destruction.

For Freud, aggression is not a drive aimed at a payoff that could be described as goal attainment (which, in turn, could be assessed by an achievement of any kind). Aggression (if it is a drive, rather than the outcome of a conflict between two drives Eros and Thanatos as appears to be the concept reflected in his later writing see Fred 1933) is a means of releasing tension, and the direction that takes is of secondary importance. Thanatos the death wish present in all human beings, which is aimed at termination of life and the dissociation of the individual is a catabolic process dictating the breakup of the individual. This is the instinct that leads to the destructive type of aggressive behavior both toward the individual himself (expressed by masochistic behavior), and toward the world in general (expressed as sadistic behavior).

is a response to frustration by attacking either the source of frustration or a substitute.

According to Dollard and Miller, it is a response to frustration by attacking either the source of frustration or a substitute.

is accompanied by intense erotic pleasure... it breaks down the boundaries between self and other, giving a voice to the need to possess and control.

The ''moral,' then, of the roman d'Albertine is similar to that of Freud: aggression is accompanied by intense erotic pleasure... it breaks down the boundaries between self and other, giving a voice to the need to possess and control. It is a version of reality paranoid, obsessive, irrational, overwhelmed by guilt, morbid, and hypochondriacal that parallels the universe of Poe's stories.

is actually a reaction that grows out of impotence.

According to Taylor, to regain self-possession, the self rebels against the other, in a negation where identity secures itself by excluding difference. The slave's offensive assertion is defensive. 'Aggressive action is actually a reaction that grows out of impotence.' For Hegel, 'the relation of the two self-conscious individuals is such that they prove themselves and each other through a life-and-death struggle. They must engage in this struggle, for they must raise their certainty of being for themselves to truth.' For Hegel, the staking of one's life is the process by which freedom is won. ''Just as each stakes his own life, so each must seek the other's death.' Through this ''trial by death' the two opposed shapes of consciousness exist, one as an independent consciousness to be for itself, and the other a dependent consciousness to live for another, forming the master and slave, respectively. The self that works to find its identity attempts to ''surmount the threat that the other poses to its autonomy by dissolving alterity and assimilating difference. The act of aggression is simultaneously hostile and erotic.'' For Taylor, this means that rather than an exercise through which the self finds itself and greater autonomy, the dialectic of self and other reveals that 'no longer can a unique and individual identity stand autonomously upon itself.' Hence the dialectic reveals the dependency in the relation between self and other, not its severe, yet in a philosophical rendition of the dynamic of identification with the aggressor.

aggression, n.Trivia

Keep exploring aggression→

aggression