ABSTRACT
In his seminal work, Decoding the Human Message, Henri-Marie Laborit offers the proposition that aggression represents the very purpose of neurology and this further suggests that aggression must be an inevitable consequence of the existence of a neurological system. Laborit presents us with the premise that the preservation of existence is the primordial imperative for any organism. He further observes that, unlike plant life (which derives its source of energy directly from the sun through photosynthesis—and therefore does not require locomotion to preserve its existence), animal life has no such capacity to transform energy directly from the sun. Rather, animals need to locomote in order to forage for an energy source (Laborit, 1977). “Thus, according to Laborit, aggression is endemic to any form of animal life” (emphasis in original) (Pallone and Hennessey, 1996: 22).
From the perspective of the sciences of behavior, doubtless the principle benefit has been the development of the capacity to relate behavior, attitudes, and emotional states to neurological events observable through advanced, technologically-sophisticated devices with relative scientific precision … To that extent … (criminology) can no longer afford to stand apart from the neurosciences if it intends to provide coherent accounts of human behavior, however that behavior may be inflected. (Pallone and Hennessey, 1996: 25)
