Can you name a society or culture where aggression is not present? Somewhere where the need to express aggressive drives, whether physically or verbally ceases to exist? The answer is you cannot, because aggression is ubiquitous. When Freud came up with his aggressive drive, he was writing from a biological perspective. For him, aggression was a human drive that we all had in us. This is a good start, but aggression takes on a more important, more consequential form when we look at one’s character development, i.e. personality.
While it is true that the aggressive drive in us needs to be released, whether through argument, fighting or exercising, how we come to understand, know and deal with anger is more complicated. What is less understood is that not all aggressive expressions are a result of anger. Children often times are scorned or punished for “acting out.” This is routinely seen as aggression in our society. But, what if the acting out is caused by something unknown or uncomfortable to the child? What if the child is suffering from anxiety or a fear that cannot be verbalized? What if the child feels an innate sense of helplessness? This all leads to an outward expression of the emotions, but the emotions are caused by anxiety, not anger. As a result, the child is yelled at and disciplined for misbehaving. His symptoms scream anger, but his underlying character is anxiety.
In many cases, one’s own anger presents a great deal of conflict. Anger has a unique relationship to sex, depression, our idealized sense of self and relationships. Sometimes, the anger within cannot be consciously accepted. As Karen Horney writes in The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, “The main reasons why awareness of hostility may be unbearable are that one may love or need a person at the same time that one is hostile toward him, that one may not want to see the reasons, such as envy or possessiveness, which have prompted the hostility, or that it may be frightening to recognize within one’s self hostility toward anyone.” These three points are all conflicts that one must confront. As a rhetorical question, how many of you have been in a relationship where suddenly you are overcome with feelings of anger or hostility toward a partner’s remarks or actions, but know you cannot react, because you are dependent in some way on the relationship?
Aggression or hostility is present in the bedroom as well. I am not talking about whips and chains, but more in terms of one partner routinely dominating the other, usually out of the need to humiliate or punish. This is aggression. Often, this aggression will lead to neurotic formations in one’s personality. It can be viewed as a power struggle, although both parties are unaware of this.
If one were to analyze him or herself, there are certain areas of anger to explore that include the possibility of anger within (anger directed at the self), jealousy, events in the past and childhood experiences. We tend to think of anger turned inward as depression (This is what Freud said), but it is the result of a conflict. One can be angry at himself for failing to compromise, failing to love or failing to live up to his idealized self. The symptoms might be helplessness, sadness and a lack of motivation, but the real problem is one of anger, one of resentment.
Anger has many forms, and most are nonverbal. The passive aggressive can do as much harm to a relationship as physical actions. Aggression in adults can lead to over-assertivness in the workplace, poor boundary setting and hostile friendships. As I have written before, these personality traits are rooted in our unconscious neurotic conflicts and can create serious relational issues if left unexplored.
Modernfreud.com 