Reading the psychoanalytic literature on the topic of aggression should be a corrective educational experience for anyone who thinks that psychoanalysts adhere to a monolithic theory. Consonant with this state of affairs, Parens declares his intention to question some basic assumptions of current psychoanalytic theory pertaining to aggression. One of his basic, unquestioned assumptions in doing so is that the examination of aggressive manifestations in the first few years of life will reveal the "simplest" forms of aggression and elucidate its subsequent development.

Parens proceeds in the first of three sections to examine the psychoanalytic theory of aggression and to offer his own reformulation of it. The reformulation includes equating observational categories