Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Heinz Hartmann commented that often in analytic thinking what may be taken for granted is in reality hypothetical, as Dr. Bak emphasized. In commenting on Freud's writing, he noted that there is little of the problem of simply quantifying the relation of the libidinal and aggressive factor entering into the etiology of neurosis. In tracing the motivational role of libido and aggression there is the question of why such prominence was ascribed to aggression by Melanie Klein. Aggression has to be studied in the framework of psychic structure to be understandable. It is not the total quantity of aggression in the disposition to conflict, but only the quantity of free aggression that is important, and the capacity of the ego to neutralize aggression. The libidinal component, however, is not to be overlooked in etiology.

Dr. Margaret Mahler asked if we are not inviting a one-sided theory of etiology in which the libidinal drives would be relatively ignored. Should the concept of fusion and defusion be so easily dismissed, since it is not necessarily inconsistent with the concept of neutralization? In the absence of libidinal gratification, there is a displacement and discharge of aggression, as a consequence of which the psychopathological problem of free aggression is a possible outcome. The preservation of the object is only a partial truth, whereas the damming up of the libido is the first to be feared by the ego. She felt that what Dr. Bak was presenting represented only one facet of the psychopathology which plays a major role in the aggressive illnesses.

Dr. Edith Jacobson thought that the etiological role of aggression was perhaps overemphasized and did not see much difference between Dr. Bak's viewpoint and that of Melanie Klein.

Dr. Rudolph Loewenstein thought the paper was timely in that it attempts to formulate our changing views regarding the role of aggressiveness in the etiology of neurosis. He stressed the importance of aggressive d