The Vicissitudes of Thanatos: On the Place of Aggression and Destructiveness in Psychoanalytic Interpretation

The unsatisfactory state of the psychoanalytic aggression theory has been clearly revealed by recent publications, panels and congresses that have dealt with the topic. The situation has grown only worse because the psychoanalytic point of view has often been replaced by a behaviouristic approach, so that aggressive behaviour has been considered instead of the intention of this behaviour (see, e.g., R Edgcumbe & J Sandler's relevant article of 1974). The efforts made to find support for the psychoanalytic theory of aggression in biology have been equally fruitless. One important reason for this indetermination and vacillation has been our unclear conception of the nature of the psychoanalytic approach or the scientific identity of psychoanalysis.

Important stimuli for the thoughts to be put forward here have been provided by a number of recent studies concerning the scientific nature of psychoanalysis (Apel 1968, Habermas 1965, Lesche 1976, Radnitzky 1970, Ricoeur 1970) and the nature of the psychoanalytic procedure (Ikonen & Rechardt, 1976a). Without going into detail