The Self Psychology of Aggression and Its Treatment

Abstract

This paper includes clinical material that illustrates the essential role of aggression in healthy development and illustrates how constructive aggression was stimulated and utilized in a self psychological analysis to further a patient's self-cohesiveness. A framework for understanding the restorative function of aggression, particularly in the form of self-assertiveness and for mastery and self-demarcation, is presented. The roles of depression, marijuana abuse, chronic overeating, and narcissistic rage as indicators of pathology involving aggression, and the resistance to the expression of that pathology, are developed and discussed.