Why aggression? Metapsychological, clinical and technical considerations

On the basis of a formalised view of metapsychology, the author briefly considers the problems inherent in the Freudian notion of a death drive or aggressive drive and then goes on to develop a new theoretical conception of aggression. Aggression is understood as an affect, action or affective action and, in relation to these, as an expression of the intensity with which a drive--whether it be the sexual drive with its libidinal cathexes or the self-preservative drive with its lethic cathexes--seeks to attain its object. In this context the author regards the regulation of closeness and distance with respect to the 'psychogeometric locus' of the relevant drive object as being of central importance. She contends that neurotic personalities suffer from specific distortions in the perception of the psychogeometric locus of their drive objects, which may give rise to an intensification of the drive tendencies prevailing in these individuals at any given time so that these tendencies take on an aggressive character. The author presents two clinical vignettes to show how her approach allows aggression and its occurrence to be conceptualised without resorting to the idea of a primary aggressive drive, and draws attention to the resulting technical consequences for interpretation.