ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Freud’s seminal work on his dual-drive theory is explored, together with its limitations, differentiating the aims from the effects of the aggressive drive. Biological, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory is fused with classical psychoanalytic theorists such as Winnicott, Margaret Mahler, and Bion to understand the embodied nature of the human infant, and the emergent psychic structures that are built upon this. It covers the feedforward process of feelings that represent unconscious memory to facilitate homeostatic regulation. The central place of the unconscious, as a reservoir of memory, traces that guide future action is integrated, as is the function of aggression as the immune system of the psyche. This function is essential to psychic survival but in humans this can become perverse and lead to unwanted personal symptoms and geopolitical processes. In this chapter, we also explore Panksepp’s neuroscientific rendering of emotion and Solms’ view of the centrality of unconscious feeling states as drivers of stasis, underscoring the preservative function of the aggressive drive as psychic immunity. Reference to psycho-biographical examples from Hitler’s life and genocide is used to illustrate this science and its links to embodiment and the emergent mind.
