Aggression

**counselor** Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:16 am

Aggression

From the Latin aggredior (walking forward), points to implementation by pipeline or fantasies designed to damage another individual or, in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, self-destruction, while, for psychology, self-affirmation. These two modes of interpretation share the presence of competition and the attempt to subdue those to whom it is directed the aggressive tendency.

1) Neuropsychology. The expression of aggressive behavior is controlled and organized by neural systems, and researchers have shown that electrical stimulation of certain nuclei of the hypothalamus and the amygdala induces a pipeline attack by man as animal. Certain brain tumors, primarily those of the temporal lobe, can be linked to higher levels of irritability and wanton destructiveness and, if removed, result in remission access aggressive. Similarly, the loss of inhibitory control of some areas corticofrontali encourages the development of aggressive behavior in the aftermath of traumatic brain injury with anterior cerebral parenchymal damage. When, however, opposite to the same stimuli are detected conducted distinct, in relation to changes of the context, the neurophysiological explanation is to be insufficient. This suggests that the cortex operates a comparison between what he has learned through the sensory means and the state central excitatory connected to it, from which originates a greater or lesser likelihood that a stimulation induces processes directed towards a filter of new peripheral sensory pathways, or permits a chaotic influx, as a result of short reflections.

2) Ethology. In this context, the a. is intended as a means of defense as well as affirmation of the subject and of the species and originates from a primitive instinct phylogenetically determined and continuously fed from a source of energy. Lorenz believes humans genetically brought to aggressive behavior, considering them inner forces, whose tendency is to discharge at the appropriate time, thus ensuring the survival of the species and the individual. Lorenz identifies, in fact, four different functions of aggressive behavior: a) to increase the distance between the various environmental components of the group, subject to the availability of food, b) select the strongest elements, being the most suitable for the protection of the group and the procreation inside c) protect the offspring d) create a hierarchical system in the social group to ensure its stability. Lorenz is inclined to the view that men, like animals, are naturally aggressive, but that through natural selection most of them can develop at the genetic tools to control these attitudes within the same species. This natural inhibition specializes in the course of centuries, but men have only relatively developed these systems to monitor the effec., Not like animals, whose aggressive behavior, if they belong to the same species, are instrumental in the regulation of elementary schemes of behavior and social relationships.

3) Psychiatry. In this context is defined as the tendency to attack others, physical or verbal, and sometimes comes accompanied by negative feelings, such as anger. High emphasis of aggressive episodes is evident in several personality disorders, such as antisocial personality, sadistic, explosive. Substance abuse, mainly alcohol, causes the lowering of the threshold of a. The patient who is in manic state, in case it is challenged, easily put in place aggressive behavior, while the face of aggressive actions seemingly incomprehensible, carried out mainly schizophrenics, you can find the cause delusional or hallucinatory experiences. In the field of psychiatry suicide, for example, is interpreted as an expression of a. directed towards themselves, while its drastic reduction in the case of asthenic personality is found in some forms of depression and schizophrenia were residual.

4) Experimental Psychology. Between the forties and sixties, the most relevant studies in this field are performed at Yale University by J. Dollard, N.E. Miller, L.W. Doob and R. Sears, who publish the popular Frustration and Aggression (1939), correlation, as emphasized by Freud in Mourning and Melancholia (1915) and in the Introductory Lectures (1915-1917). These authors postulate that a. always arises from frustration and that it induces regularly in some form of a. Also consider that when it is not able to achieve their own ends, man manifests aggressive tendencies are not always directed to the head of the frustration, but moved. It is also occupied, on the one hand, the evaluation of basic relationships, in which the change of frustration determines the change of a. the other, the way of loosening of the latter, the ways in which you can control or suppress. Subsequent studies have shown, however, that not necessarily the frustration generates a. Because the consequent reactions can range from depression to resignation, if the frustration is too intense or is perceived as arbitrary. Another element of particular interest in the context of experimental psychology is the cathartic function, performed by the act aggressively when it is translated into action directed toward being frustrating or his substitute, thus inducing voltage reduction.

5) Social Psychology. Social psychologists define a. as the set of actions to damage to one or more individuals as a form of learned social behavior. In the thirties, K. Lewin, R. Lippit and R.K. White perform a search now classic in the history of social psychology, on the direction of democratic and authoritarian groups of children, having as its object the elements favoring the aggressive phenomena, which shows that a. occurs mainly to certain members of the group, real scapegoats against whom vented the voltage induced by the presence of the authoritarian leader. Aggressive tendencies have a cathartic effect with relative easing tension, as stated by experimental psychologists, but the satisfaction derived from seeing the damage caused to the victim acts as reinforcement, the loosening of inhibitions originates from the evaluation of the profitability of aggressive behavior. Bandura, opposing the drive theory that identifies the causes of a. potential in the principles, argues that they must be identified in past experiences and rewards bestowed in consequence of the implementation of such conduct directly or in different social circumstances and environmental conditions.

6) Psychoanalysis. Adler formula in 1908 the concept of instinct of aggression, defined as innate instinct or primary, which is a starting point for the creation of a new theory that all behavior patterns originate from a masculine protest aggressive manifestation of the will power to compensate inferiority feelings. The concept of aggressive drive is also to be considered as a means of self-assertion which, if repressed, can cause the others are perceived as enemies or induce an exaggerated docility and self-devaluation. In his early writings, Freud gives aa. relative importance, considering it an element of the sexual drive, a response to repression or prevention of libidinal evident in sadism. In 1915, with the publication of Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, assimilates the aggressive drive to the instinct of self-preservation, aimed at controlling the external world and to the maintenance and affirmation of individual existence. Freud, after formulating the structural theory and have suggested the ego and the superego as separate instances of the id, elaborates his theory of a. as a drive. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) in the. has its place as the destructive instinct existing independently in the id, along with sexual impulses. It's I who should, therefore, check the aggressive drives to allow the body proper insertion in the social context (Civilization and Its Discontents, 1929). A further distinction is implemented by Freud between instinct of aggression directed towards the outside, and the destructive instinct, also directed toward you. Fenichel denies the existence of a death instinct, considering the aggressive manifestations of the individual event details, such as derivatives of libidinal. In particular, the frustrated libido and raw can give rise to aggressive and destructive impulses, without implying that the drive is eminently self-destructive. Melanie Klein, on the other hand, welcomes the Freudian hypothesis on the primary drive of death and indeed largely re-evaluates the role of a. the conflict between the instinct of life and death, as between the anxieties and defenses that it creates. Klein attributes from the first months of a child's life to a predominant aggressive fantasies directed by him to his good object, the mother. The a. changes in confusion between their loved ones and the characteristics of the object, which depicts a feeling of persecution of evil each object: the child feels that effect attacked and tries to defend himself, enacting defense mechanisms illusory. The persecutory, hence increases in a terrifying vicious circle in the. defensive and the latter the first, and so on. The child is then seen by Klein as a container full of hate and destructiveness because of his inability to love: hate is indeed automatic, while love has to be learned with the progressive structuring of the mental apparatus, initially non-existent. In this sense, the author subverts Freud's initial thesis on the primacy of libidinal and the birth of a. only as a result of the frustration induced by these drives and also believed that the libido and aggression are not affected and drives. Hartmann and Kriss, in the psychology of the self, rather incline to the separation of the death drive from the aggressive, placing it in relation to the principle of pleasure-unpleasure like the libido. Introduce the concept of a neutralization, stripping the a. its negative valences and asservendola ego in carrying out its functions, without causing destructive consequences to that instance. Identifying endogenous origin of a., Define a drive comparable to libido and not, as suggested by Freud, a consequence of the frustration of the fulfillment of pleasure.