Remarks on Aggression

At a meeting of the Sigmund Freud Institute, Frankfurt, in 1964, on a topic of “Aggression and Adaptation”, which to some degree was a discussion of Konrad Lorenz's just published book (1963), “Natural History of Aggression, the so-called Evil”, Paula Heimann participated and emphasised in her discussion the role of internalization which leads to a new kind of consciousness and being that sets men apart from animals. She wondered whether the appearance of cruelty could be considered a new form of aggression different from animal aggressivity that seems to be free of cruelty and only directed towards preservation of the species. It seems to me that the idea to separate cruelty from aggression in general is a new and interesting idea. It makes it possible to differentiate the destructive form of aggressivity derived from the death instinct from the constructive form which Freud originally called self-preservation and which agrees with the Darwinian idea of evolution and the survival of the fittest Spitz, in his paper ‘To the Adaptation Promoting Role of Aggression’ , says that “without aggression, without the forces and tools drawn from it, there would be no evolution”.* Aggression is not only destructive, it is the life instinct, it-is life itself. Without it nothing would work, we would not work. Energy in itself is neither good nor evil, but can be used either way. So it is with aggression. It is at least as adaptable as the sexual drive, if not more so. When the sex drive is frustrated, it may change to anger, hatred, revenge—by mobilizing the aggressive drive, which is admixed with it. For sex itself needs a certain amount of aggression to set itself in motion. Aggression is not only destructive. Freud himself did not see it that way for a long time. He looked upon it as “ego-instinct” and identified it with the self-preservative instinct in contrast to libido. Only in 1930 in the VIth Chapter of “Civilization and its Discontents” did he give special consideratio