This is the case even though the public-at-large has not read Freud on the subject and probably would not accept his notion of a death instinct, even if they were to become familiar with it. Ī great many people think of aggression as instinctual. How, then, do people manage to avoid wreaking terrible violence upon one another? The answer, according to Freud, is catharsis: Watching violent events or engaging in mild displays of anger diminishes the aggressive urge and leaves us emotionally purified and calmed. But it is also because displacement redirects our self-destructive energies outward we aggress against others to avoid aggressing against ourselves. If he was right, how is it that we all don't commit suicide? In part, it is because of a struggle between Thanatos and Eros, which, luckily for us, Eros usually wins. Thanatos, an innate drive toward disintegration that Freud believed was directed against the self. He considered aggression to be a consequence of a more primary instinct he called. Aggression-as-InstinctĪ prominent psychologist associated with the aggression-as-instinct school is Sigmund Freud. ![]() In fact, much of the debate on aggression might be framed as a more general "nature vs. The three schools form a continuum along which, at one end, aggression is seen as a consequence of purely innate factors and, at the other end, of external factors. ![]() While the definition of aggression varies somewhat from author to author, I find it helpful to look at theories of aggression by dividing them into three schools: those that consider aggression as an instinct, those that see it as a predictable reaction to defined stimuli, and those that consider it learned behavior. More specifically, aggression is defined as "any sequence of behavior, the goal response to which is the injury of the person toward whom it is directed." You may notice that this definition, even on the surface, poses a conceptual challenge: How do we know the intent of the actor? Aggression is behavior whose intent is to harm another. ![]() For our purposes, the more narrow definition used in psychology is most appropriate. In conversation, we may use the word "aggressive" to define a person assaulting another, a carnivorous animal seeking prey, even a storm wreaking havoc on the earth it passes. "Aggression" is a familiar term in common parlance, as well as a key concept in the study of human behavior.
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