The Role of Aggression in Impulse Disorders: Discussant's Remarks*

Speaking as an impulsive person, I will object to some of Goldwater's statements about us, but I would also like to tell you how creative and impulsive I find his thinking. I don't know many people who will agree with my ideas but that's probably because not many impulsives have the time to write. Impulsive people are oriented in space, not time, Goldwater tells us, and when they have fantasies they are unrealistic and based on immediate needs and the environment. Since impulsives do not live in time, they cannot have fantasies about the past or the future. They do not use fantasies as substitutes for their impulses, nor do they use them to plan what they do and do not want to do in the future. Because they live without planning, their actions will tend to be destructive.

I think this view, proposed by Goldwater, may be a phenomenological view of impulsiveness that provides us with a clear clinical description of the subject, but I would like to add another perspective. I do agree with Goldwater when he says that impulses arise from stress or need, and when acted upon they relieve the stress or need in the short term. While tension reduction and partial discharge of unacceptable impulses may be a correct explanation of impulsiveness, it may be an insufficient explanation. For a fuller explanation, I would suggest we define the observed impulsiveness in terms of internal mental events. Perhaps we should say instead