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The propensity of humans to attack each other, though a tragic aspect of existence, did not threaten the survival of the species until the advent of the atomic bomb scarcely two decades ago. The continued existence of civilization, if not of mankind itself, now for the first time depends on our ability to master our destructive behavior. To do this will require much deeper knowledge of its sources and means of control than now exists.
Since aggression takes many forms and has a great many causes, students of all aspects of human nature can contribute to this understanding. It is, therefore, a pleasure to welcome this essay by an experienced, erudite, concerned psychoanalyst to the small but growing body of literature that tries to cast light on this crucial dilemma of mankind. The range of topics considered bears witness to the author's breadth of knowledge. After a brief historical review of various conceptions of good and evil in man, especially as manifested in the great religions, he reviews some aspects of hate in individuals, then considers three manifestations of group violence—the crusades, the race riots in Watts, and the motorcycle gangs—finally returning again to the general problem of evil and concluding with some suggestions as to how people could be raised to be less aggressive. In the course of this discussion, he touches on matters as widely disparate as territoriality and theodicy.
The topic of violence is so complex that no one person or one theoretical framework can adequately encompass it, and this book, like all others on the subject, is adequate in some respects. In general, the author's background and experience lead to overemphasis on the pathological, a tendency reinforced by heavy reliance on psychoanalytic theory. Since this grew out of Freud's work with psychiatric patients and was