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Dr. Parens's erudite, difficult, and thought-provoking book requires careful reading, rereading, and cogitation. He attempts to delineate both the view of aggression in current Freudian metapsychology and its ontogenesis and role in the first five years of life. His ten years as principal investigator of an early childhood development program and his many years of experience as a child analyst have impressed him with the usefulness of Margaret Mahler's theory of symbiosis and separation-individuation, as a frame of reference both for child observation and for the understanding of early intrapsychic processes.
The first section of the book, a review of the psychoanalytic theory of aggression, is written in a scholarly, footnoted, and closely reasoned style. It includes a well-rounded and succinct historical recounting and formulation of Freud's theories interspersed with criticism of other theorists. Parens is a strong proponent of the pre-death-instinct formulations of aggression and critical of Hartmann's proposition that the ego is endowed with innate, non-instinctual energy. Aggression and sexuality are assumed to be on a par with each other as the two essential drives subsuming all instinctual impulses. The nondestructive trend in aggression is defined according to the 1915 criteria for instinctual drives; it is thus seen as serving and motivating the ego's task to master and to adapt as well to insure the gratification of libidinal and narcissistic wishes.
Because of the significance for his theoretical position entailed in describing the characteristics of the aggressive drive prior to any