Aggression and the endangered self

Discussions of aggression in the psychoanalytic literature are dominated, both explicitly and implicitly, by loyalty to, or rejection of, Freud's theory of the aggressive drive, which has caused an unfortunate polarization. An approach to aggression is presented that preserves essential features of both drive theory and nondrive theory traditions. It is suggested that this way of thinking about aggression is actually prevalent in both contemporary Freudian and non-Freudian thought without being recognized as such.