Freudian aggression theory: Two hypotheses.

Abstract

An examination of Freud's development as a theoretician can be a fascinating process. From his practice emerged a theory strongly tied both to his biological training (with its corresponding philosophical orientation of determinism) and to the clinician's office. With the years, the demands of theory building moved Freud away both from the biological (although there is always at least a nod in this direction) and from the strictly toward the metaphysical. So much was this the case that Jones (1957) can say: So far as I know, the only analysts, e.g. Melanie Klein, Karl Menninger, and H. Nunberg, who still employ the term 'death instinct' do so in a purely sense which is remote from Freud's original theory. Any he made of it were postulated after devising the theory, not before. (Emphasis mine, B.K.) Two current aspects of the death instinct theory are particularly interesting to me: (1) The fact that Freud left a legacy of two ways of explaining aggression theoretically; and, (2) Are there clinical applications which flow from one of these approaches which are different from those which flow from the other? The Death Instinct