Chapter 4. On Passivity and Aggression: Their Interrelationship (1989) (Written in 1971, Published here for the First Time)

This paper was given at the 27th Congress of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Vienna, July 1971, and is here published for the first time.

In this chapter I want to discuss some aspects of aggression in a group of patients whose behaviour in the analysis appears to be strikingly unaggressive, so that they seem passive and inert — the analyst apparently being expected to carry all responsibility for interest or progress in the analysis. I shall suggest that, in these patients, loss of conscious contact with their aggression is associated with a failure in discovering their own identity, and that their sense of identity and lively activity can only be established if their powerful and self-destructive impulses can be uncovered in the transference, making it possible for them to integrate their aggressivity with the rest of their personality.

In this group there are, of course, variations in type of patient and details of psychopathology. My aim in this brief chapter is to bring forward a few ideas, which I shall illustrate with fragments of material from one, probably fairly typical patient, and then make links with similar problems in different types of passive patients — particularly the very passive perverts and the more schizoid and withdrawn patients, whose passivity is associated with fragmentation of the self.

Patients of the type that I am discussing frequently come to analysis with vague complaints that they are unable to clarify, uncertain about their potentialities and not knowing what to do with their lives or careers. The kind of behaviour one sees in the analysis can be illustrated roughly by my patient A. The patient seems to experience a great need for analysis and attends regularly, yet appears to have little reason for being there. Sessions start with remarks that are diffuse and descriptive, but rarely suggesting that she wants help about any specific difficulty, and almost never is there any reference to previous work done. The

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