ABSTRACT
Since Freud postulated aggression as a drive in 1920, this theme has been a source of profound debate among psychoanalysts. Few ideas in psychoanalytic theory have generated more controversy than the question of whether aggression is a fundamental or irreducible human instinct, whether it is innate or reactive to the environment. Aggression has thus also been seen as a reaction to an experience of danger, such as breaks in attunement, impingement, negative affective experiences, or as a defence against threats to the psychological self. Freud continuously modified his views on the aggressive or destructive instincts. Psychoanalysts have tended to equate the opposition between the life and death instincts with that between sexuality and aggressiveness. An analysis of the psychoanalytic literature in Britain uncovers a debate between those who have emphasised aggression as innate and those who emphasised the importance of the mother—child dyad and the traumatic nature of the primary relationships in the shaping of aggression.
