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In recent years, experimental psychologists have been increasingly concerned with aspects of human behaviour and psychopathology which are within the province of the psychotherapist. These two books are evidence of this trend.
Buss approaches the problem of normal and abnormal aggression. On the basis of experimental studies of human aggression in the laboratory, he distinguishes between, and defines, aggression, anger, and hostility. In a behavioural theory, which overcomes the limitations of the frustration-aggression hypothesis and instinct theory, he describes aggression as a learned response and discusses situations which lead to its reinforcement or extinction. The implications of the theory are considered in relation to general psycho-pathology, psychosomatic states, aggression in childhood, and the nature of prejudice.
He criticizes psycho-analytical formulations because of the poor definition of terms and the impossibility of deducing from them precise predictions which can be tested. In his view, their “acceptance is not a matter of evaluating evidence but a strategic judgement of the best bet for explaining quasi-empirical facts”, and they are tested by “survival over time, rather than their survival of a series of experimental tests”. Nevertheless, he includes a valuable, concise review of analytical theories of aggression, including a note on Jung's concept of libido, with an analysis of the literature on transference hostility.
Some of the disagreement between behavioural and analytical theory seems to be more apparent than real, arising from different methods of approach and the shifting meaning of words. Buss suggests that his explanation of depression is of a different kind from that of psycho-analysis. This might be so, but it does not mean that his account of the learning of self-hatred and self-aggression, reinforced by rejection and negative labelling, contradicts the concept of ambivalence towards an internalized object. An important difference is