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In the preceding chapters, the id and the development of the concept “wish” were discussed mainly in terms of the libidinal instinctual drive.
Any attempt to discuss the development of the aggressive instinctual drive must remain much more speculative. I have assumed that the id develops under the influence of growth and maturation of somatic structures, and that it utilizes—as the ego does—certain primary autonomous apparatuses; that all through life the instinctual drives keep receiving “supplies” from physiological sources. This assumption also applies to the development of the aggressive instinctual drive.
Animal life on every level of organization is based on destruction.1 The virus invades a living cell; a bird feeds on countless worms; man is a voracious destroyer. Destruction of an object presupposes, as indicated in connection with libidinal development, an approach response.2 We can detect in the evolutional development of destructive approach behavior a similar shift from dependency on external stimulation to internalization. This evolutional development repeats itself to a certain extent in infancy. Only after a certain primitive level of internalization has taken place can we speak of an aggressive instinctual drive as a psychological concept, in con