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In 1940 Freud observed that: “All of psychoanalysis has to be reformulated in terms of understanding the aggressive drive as separate from the libidinal drive.” Now, forty years later, it is clear that this task has yet to be accomplished, for the psychoanalytic theory of aggression is still the poor relative of libidinal theory. Although there has been lately a growing clinical interest in aggression, most analysts have yet to pay as much attention to the aggressive feelings and behavior of their clients as they pay to their client's libidos.
The psychoanalytic theory of aggression had its origins in Freud's “Little Hans” paper of 1909, in which he argued that aggression is one of the self-preserving instincts, rejecting Adler's view that aggression is an instinct in its own right, independent of the sexual and self-preservative instincts. The matter rested there until ten years later when Freud formulated his famous death-instinct theory, in which he elevated the aggressive instinct to equal status with the libidinal instinct (redefined to include both sexual and life-preserving instincts). The aim of this new aggressive instinct was no longer to preserve life but to destroy it. And, just as the libidinal instinct proceeded from narcissistic self-love to object love, so the aggressive instinct, originally narcissistically self-destructive, was turned outward and proceeded from primary masochism to sadism.
It is well known that analysts have found it difficult to accept Freud's second model of the aggressive instinct, for the theory insists that the aim of instinctive aggression is always destructive, and analysts have observed that aggressive behavior is often life-preservative