ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the recent and more refined psychoanalytic approaches, it bears noting, have in many cases moved well beyond some of the more simple orientations in the course. There are two implications which can be drawn from psycho-physiological accounts have helped indirectly in the propagation of some of the major assumptions underlying the creed of catharsis. In the first place, the assertion that humans share with 'lower animals' a physiologically based orientation to aggression is not far from designating the more deep-rooted parts of our nature as essentially prone to a type of violence which points to the resilience of an irrational beast within. In the second place, the suggestion that the neocortex can give a specific direction to the expression of 'activated neurological mechanisms' is also not very far from the claim that it is possible to give vent to aggressive or even destructive impulses in safe and socially acceptable outlets.
