You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This slim volume contains a rich collection of papers delivered at the 25th Annual Margaret Mahler Symposium in 1994 on developmental and clinical aspects of aggression by psychoanalysts Harold Blum, Otto Kernberg, Selma Kramer, and Fred Pine. The discussions of these papers by Salman Akhtar, Dorothy Holmes, Peter Neubauer, and Henri Parens are interesting contributions in their own right.
In the first contribution Kramer observes that the descriptions of the Oedipus complex have customarily emphasized the child's aggressive and libidinal impulses toward the parents, but that the other side of this issue—parental hatred toward children—has largely been ignored. Noting that in the classical Oedipus myth it was Laius who planned the murder of his three-day-old son, she presents the phenomenon of filicide: parental aggression that was held in check as long as the child was helpless and dependent, can be activated and break through at the advent of puberty. Kramer notes that it is largely older male political leaders and legislators who send mostly male children off to war. Case vignettes are offered illustrating that fathers who suffered abuse from their own fathers are driven through identification with the aggressor to relate similarly to their sons.
Blum carefully traces the lengthy process by which the establishment of impulse control and superego development occurs in children. He then offers the concept of “sanctified aggression” where instead of being regarded as a threat to the self or object, hatred may be authorized, rationalized, and justified. He suggests, “Because hate is so destructive to familial and group cohesion, it is easily displaced and projected outside the family or the group” (p. 23). Blum continues that there is no simple relationship between hate and rage though they are usually bound together. A rage center is found in the human brain near the hypothalamic locus for sexual excitement. No such locus is known for the attitude of hate. Hate may be