ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the paradoxical notion that hate precedes love and that understanding human aggression requires fresh insights from neuroscience. Authors such as Freud and Winnicott noted that there is a ‘first drive’ (Death Drive) in the human psyche that precedes the life drive, but in his era, Freud lamented the limitations of this theoretical idea, awaiting the fresh insights of science to verify his theoretical observations. The paradoxical nature of the function of aggression and violence in the human psyche is explored, using psychoanalytical theory, Darwinian evolutionary theory, and neuroscience, extending the life and death drives that Freud first discovered in psychoanalysis. The use of geopolitical and individual aggressor data not only assists in this book to demonstrate the theoretical concepts of the aggressive or death drive, including historical speeches by geopolitical figures such as Hitler and Putin, but also draws on the public cases of violent offenders and serial killers and other examples of social violence, such as under Apartheid South Africa and the Sharpeville Massacre, as well as political detention and solitary confinement.
