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Aggressive impulses belong to all child life. The forces which liberate them are painful stimuli from the outside world, especially when produced by a loved person. In the early period the hostility is checked not so much by a super-ego as by the counter-hostility of the environment. As a result of the opposition, the aggressiveness becomes socialized. Part is used in self-preservation, part can be legitimately liberated by disappointments and frustration and part becomes the driving force of the erotic life. Defences must be erected against what remains. In observing children in the Temple University nursery school, it was found that at least twenty types of defences not unlike adult defences were already in action: e.g. withdrawal, denial, confusion, secretiveness, distortion, etc. These were for the most part used as a protection from actual retaliation but in some cases they protected from super-ego punishment.
Although there is this early attempt to master aggression in the chronically aggressive child, defences fail. The reason for this may be one of the following: (1) Some children may have stronger aggressive impulses. (2) Certain organic brain diseases increase the aggressive