ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes the psychoanalytic hypothesis that man is born with an aggressive instinctual drive. By aggression, he referred to the innate urge of the child to use force in order to control, to dominate, to overcome, to master, to influence something in the outside world. The author explores how the view offered by psychoanalysis had demolished two of man's favorite myths: the myth of the innocent virtue of babies and the myth of man's innate nobility and his superiority over other living creatures. Turning once more to the developmental themes that formed the underpinning of his theoretical understanding, the author believed that the most important source of violence stems from the early family life of the individual. Returning to ideas that he started to outline in the 1960 lecture on people who hate and discussed specifically in the lecture about why men like war, the author refocused on man's fascination with violence.
