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Investigators from various scientific fields are challenging current concepts and exploring new theories of aggression, a topic that elicits considerable controversy, expressed at times in strident discord. Conceptual differences exist both within fields and between fields, and these disagreements in turn are intensified when they become politicized or entangled with questions of genetic engineering. Debates appearing in the popular and scientific press focus upon the degree to which human behavior in general, or aggression in particular, is biologically determined, and upon the extent to which the behavior of humans and of lower animals can be viewed as existing on the same continuum. Some investigators question whether innate instincts in animals do in fact exist and if they do, whether aggression can be classified as an instinct and whether the knowledge gained from the study of animals is indeed applicable to the further understanding of human behavior. Psychoanalysts are evaluating the psychoanalytic instinctual drive theory of aggression, either challenging it completely or attempting to amplify it.