Aggression:
"But every now and then
everything went Kraut und Ruben,
topsy-turvy. One was Erschuttert, shocked; perhaps cried,
Verdammt, Damn!"
Irving Stone,
The Passions of the Mind,
A Novel of Sigmund Freud,
Doubleday & Company, Inc.,
Garden City New York, 1971.
INSTINCT THEORY:
Sigmund Freud recognized that there is a personality structure which is a mediator between an individual and reality. "We call this organization his 'I' [Ego]." (Hinsie, Leland E. and Robert J. Campbell, Oxford University Press, 1960.) Thereby, when everything goes "Kraut and Ruben" (topsy-turvy), there is an aggressive breakdown between an individual and reality or, rather, an Ego breakdown. Specifically, the breakdown is that of a noxa, an injurious agent or noxious introject, sending the personality structures topsy-turvy. In extreme cases, the noxa can provoke neurosis which could manifest as the psychical disorders of actual neuroses (neurasthenia), transference (hysteria, obsession and compulsion), narcissistic neuroses (schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychoses) and traumatic neuroses. (Ibid.)
Misdirected vs. Adaptive Mechanisms
In less extreme cases, the noxa can produce various Defense Neuro-Psychoses in the repression (or other defense mechanism) of an intolerable idea painful to the individual Ego. This could be seen as aggression turned inward if the defense is misdirected rather than adaptive to a realistic stimulus. Several analytical defenses are proposed to account for mechanisms of Ego protection:
Analytical Defense MechanismsRationalization: imputing logical motivation to behavior.Projection: placing the blame on the "other" (person or object).Compensation: substitution of rewarding traits for ones which make an individual feel inferior.Regression: an unconscious retreat from the present into the past.Denial: a refusal to face a real situation.Fantasy: imagination of things as one would like them to be.Displacement: shift of emotion/meaning to the other (person or object).Acting Out: quick, direct expression sans ethical considerations.Repression: tensions blocked from consciousness.Reaction formation: development of opposite actions to repressed anxiety.Undoing: negating action toward disapproved desire.Emotional Insulation: withdrawal from stress through reduction in emotional involvement.Intellectualization: rational explanations are used to defuse the emotional charge.Identification: status enhancement through reliance for adequacy from the other.Introjection: internalization of opposing attitudes to survive.(Modified from: Coleman, James C., Personality Dynamics and Effective Behavior, Scott, Foresman and Company, Chicago, 1960.)
The causal factors resulting in the initiation of a defense mechanism could stem from a physical and/or psychological trauma such as that resulting from aggression (Coleman refers to the aggression phenomenon as "Task-oriented attack" which is when adjustive demand does not lie within the individuals regulatatory resources, Ibid.). When "attack" is assault, the injury can be channeled onto the society. It is in this way that aggression toward the individual can become a legacy of aggression channeled from the individual with a suitable catalyst then a conversion (such as a somatic seizure, Ibid.) could occur. The common, lay term for the conversion reaction such as in the case of aggression could be "acting-out" and may be, in actuality a reaction formation (as "Acting-out" is more a Neo-Freudian Psychoanalytic concept as it is modified from the indications Sigmund Freud left). This does not mean, however, that acting-out is not purposive. "Acting Out" does have a purpose if adaptive.
The adaptive purpose for the individual ego (in "Acting Out") is to produce a catharsis or purge of tension anxiety and allow the individual to resume a more healthy ego functioning. This purpose is not always successfully completed (ie: when misdirected) hence a topsy-turvy result (such as "Acting-Out" inappropriately) could occur and be projected in an unhealthy manner toward the society (ie: a Antisocial, Disocial, or Deviation Reaction, Ibid.). For example, the individual may not have what Freud called "a complete Oedipus" due to an inadequate relationship with parental figures and the result is an inverted Oedipus rather than a healthy balance with adequate ego control. This is a misdirected defense. Thereby, the inappropriate variety of "acting-out" may not be adequately cathected (fixed to the appropriate object such as the mother or father feelings) and violent aggression, for example, may erupt and be directed toward another party (such as another person, place or thing). Psychoanalysis sees this as inadequate control of the instinctual personality structure of the "Id". (Ibid.)
Aggression is a societal definition of the concept. Society sees this misdirected "acting-out" as senseless aggression. In addition, with any further loss of ego control, boundaries disintegrate, devaluating anxiety arouses and the third personality structure falters: the "Superego" (ie: ethics, conscience and morality, Ibid.) Thereby, "Acting-out" is misdirected and ultimately pathological when ethical controls breakdown. "This is not usually possible unless his ethical controls are relatively weak, since he would otherwise subject himself to devaluating and anxiety-arousing guilt feelings that would be worse than the original anxiety." (Coleman, James C., Personality Dynamics and Effective Behavior, Scott, Foresman and Company, Chicago, 1960.)
The Seething Cauldron of the Id
"I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity."
Sylvia Plath
"Elm"
(Ellmann, Richard (ed.)
The New Oxford Book of American Verse
Oxford University Press, New York, 1976)
When ego breakdown occurs, the id impulses can break through toward manifestation upon the external world (such as in the misdirected Acting-Out). The result is in more anxiety rather than the desired catharsis, problems (a moral conflict), somatic difficulty and even more pathological symptoms. Thereby, the representation of the seething cauldron upon the external environment can erupt in such behavior as aggression when the ego system is topsy-turvy.
"According to Freud, a certain amount of anxiety is natural. However, when unacceptable id impulses buried in the unconscious try to break through, massive anxiety is generated. Such anxiety creates problems and symptoms. The symptoms that appear express two things: (1) They represent the undesirable impulse itself...or (2) the energy that is connected with the undesirable act finds an outlet in physical pains, nervous symptoms, and so on. Abnormal behavior is thus symbolic in the sense that it represents what is going on beneath the surface; it externally represents a seething cauldron of unacceptable energy impulses trying to free themselves."
(Sigmund Freud, The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement in A.A. Brill (ed.) The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, New York, Random House, 1938, and F. Fromm-Reichmann, "Psychiatric Aspects of Anxiety" in C. Thompson, M. Mayer and E. Witenberg (eds.), An Outline of Psychoanalysis, New York, Random House,1955.)
Further than Freud
Freud stimulated an entire host of others to pursue what came to be known as Neo-Freudian Psychology. It is unclear just where to draw the line between the Freudians and the Neo-Freudians. One theorist on the line is Carl Jung who, though Swiss, was close to Sigmund Freud for a time and then experienced a schism. They reason may have been that Jung and others added to the basic theory Freud had proposed and Freud responded in anger: "No one need be surprised at the subjective character of the contribution I propose to make here to the history of the psychoanalytic movement, nor need anyone wonder at the part I play in it. For psychoanalysis is my creation; for ten years I was the only person who concerned himself with it..." (Freud in Stone, Irving, The Passions of the Mind, Doubleday and Company, New York, 1971.)
The Freudians and Neo-Freudians persisted anyway, despite the objections of the master. One of those who studied beyond Freud was Carl Jung. Freud had developed an interest in Totem and Taboo arguing that every tribe had its totem and "This totem, Sigmund suggested, became the common ancestor of each clan; it was also the guardian spirit...(Ibid.). Freud's reason for the study of totems was to integrate Psychoanalysis with anthropology, philology and folklore to make Psychoanalysis more universal. Freud wanted to show that violation of the totem was a form of neurotic behavior (as in the case of ual deviation). Jung's orientation to the concept was radically different.
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