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.
A brief historical review of the theory of aggression reveals that Freud's death- instinct based theory has been questioned by many theorist-clinicians who increasingly see the need to account for a primary nondestructive aspect of aggression, as well as for a primary relationship between aggression and adaptation. There is aggression that is inherently nondestructive, alongside inborn aggression that is destructive though not hostile. Critical is the consensus that hostile destructiveness is not inborn, but rather is “produced” when the experience of excessive unpleasure activates the inborn mechanism which generates it. Such changes in theory have implications for the psychoanalytic clinical situation. For example, the analysis of transference hatred is facilitated when transference interpretations are linked with reconstructions of past traumatic experiences. Parens discusses the influence of this key hypothesis, that “excessive unpleasure generates hostile destructiveness,” on interpretations of transference hatred. He discusses cases of malignant hatred, the need for its containment in the transference, the treatment approach, the analyst's need for self-analysis, and the need for benign enactments of transference engagement.