Aggression, Hatred, and Social Violence*

The implicit potential for destructive aggression is a general human capacity or threat. It derives ultimately from neurobiological structures that determine aggressive affect, and that, from a broader sociobiological perspective, reflect the function of instinctive animal behaviour geared to protect and expand the gene pool. This instinctive behaviour, characteristic of mammals, includes the exertion of aggression in defence of territoriality—that is, of food reservoirs, the protection of the infant mammal from predators—the fight on the part of males with other males to gain access to females, and, in the case of primates, the elimination of dangerous challenges to the established social hierarchy. These biological functions of aggression, expressed in the neurobiology of affects, may be distorted in the human being by pathology of the corresponding neurobiological regulating systems, severe physical trauma during early stages of infant development (painful, chronic illness), or severe psychic trauma related to the pathology of early object relations.

The rapidly accumulating knowledge about the origins and manifestations of aggressive behaviour within the field of neurobiology (with particular reference to the psychophysiology of affects), within clinical psychiatry (with emphasis on the study of severe personality disorders), and in the social sciences (with emphasis on the study of socially sanctioned violence and of violent behaviour in marginal groups)