ABSTRACT
It is characteristic for the aversive motivational system to exert some influence over all the basic needs. At its best, it serves us as well in terms of promoting our survival (for example, with signal anxiety) as well as supporting our self-regulation. Any kind of perceived threat naturally evokes fear, and over-satiation, for example, after too much food or sex, may evoke aversion or disgust. Too much curiosity will become inhibited by means of shame. Too much symbiosis in intimacy may with time be interrupted by impulses to withdraw. An aversive system which is to a “good-enough” extent integrated into the self will function, if necessary, in a compensatory way that serves to maintain the balance of our psychosomatic economy. However, the aversive realm can also play a critical part in the origin and maintenance of disturbing complexes, whenever aversive emotions such as fear or shame predominate in a dysfunctional manner.
