The Development of Aggression: Links Between Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology

How does aggression develop? Is it an innate part of the organism or does it result from the frustration of impulses or desires? Parens revises Freud's theory (1920) that aggression has its origin in the death instinct and that the organism by way of the repetition compulsion seeks self-destruction. Parens suggests that aggression is not primarily a destructive drive, but that it has nondestructive aspects manifest in assertiveness and mastery. Parens also attempts to reformulate the metapsychology of aggression in relation to Mahler's (Mahler, et al., 1975) developmental theory.

In one of the strongest portions of the book, Parens traces a continuum of aggression, describes the current state of psychoanalytic theory of aggression and reformulates that theory. He also presents a thorough review of the traditional psychoanalytic literature on the subject.

Parens employed the method of direct infant observation. Presumably, his theoretical formulations are based on this observational data. It is not clear, however, to what extent the theory derives from the observations and to what extent the observations are used to support the theory. Although the observations are interesting,