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Yet aggression is also necessary for human beings as a way to protect one’s individuality, to enhance one’s social standing, and often to protect oneself from bodily harm—all purposes very important to the maintenance of one’s mental health also. It is therefore a complex phenomenon and, depending on the context, the term aggression can be made to carry positive or negative connotations. It can manifest itself in the form of a behavior that may be self-protective and self-assertive, become more active with the result being injury to others, or passively wrought to the infliction of harm unto oneself. Whether or not aggression is biologically determined, the product of environmental influences, or simply a learned behavior is a slippery-slope argument that can neither be debunked nor proved at the current stage of psychological and medical research. These considerations go beyond the scope of this paper, and therefore will not be discussed. On the other hand, the application, through comparison and contrast, of the psychodynamic theories to issues of human aggression can provide some moderately satisfactory models of this phenomenon, in spite of the uncertainty as to the scientific origins of aggression. In particular, the psychoanalytic model of Freud and the analytical psychology of Jung are an excellent basis by which to elucidate some origins of human aggression. The constructs devised by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are the most notable of the psychodynamic theories, and therefore the tools best suited to dissect the anatomy of human aggressive tendencies. Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, would have described aggression in terms of the Ego, Super-Ego, and the Id, the three structures of human personality which must invariably clash in order to produce resultant human behaviors. Freudian aggression can also be described through the Pleasure Principle, and the constructs of the Libido (the drive for pleasure) and of Thanatos (the “death drive”). Jung, the originator of the most prominent variation of Freudian psychodynamics, would have explained aggression through his analytical psychology which comprises the constructs of the Psyche: Consciousness, the Personal Unconscious, the Collective Unconscious, and all of their respective sub-structures. These are the theories by which aggression will be effectively illustrated and explained herein. The Roles of the Ego, Super-Ego, and Id in Aggression According to Freud, the id is the base of all animalistic instincts, the one thing that humans share in common with their animal brethren. The structures that separate humans from wild animals are those of the Ego and the Super-Ego, which collectively serve to protect man from his own violent nature and thus render him “civilized”. The Super-Ego’s role in the psyche is virtually non-descript, containing morals and values applied to everyday life, and thereby serving the role of the human conscience. The Ego and Id are effectively the sub-conscious portion of the human psyche. The Ego on the other hand is primarily conscious, serving as the “gate-keeper to the sub-conscious”. The role designated for the Ego is therefore to abate the deluge of thoughts socially or otherwise seen as taboo, and hence become threatening to the psyche if allowed to escape the subconscious reservoir of the Id. The mind is thus a battleground between the Ego and Id and therefore requires a very strong Ego to control the backlash of the violent and sexually base nature of the Id. But sometimes the Ego will encounter periods during which it is not strong enough to repress the Id, and therefore results in actions that are often attributed to a “lapse in judgment”. The Ego (backed by the Super-Ego, as will be discussed later) invariably is the key component of the mind responsible for the controlling of the animal impulses contained within the Id. There are thus only two scenarios possible which serve the capacity of withholding human aggressive urges: (1) the Ego remains powerful enough throughout one’s lifetime so as to render him oblivious to his latent violent and aggressive tendencies, contained within the Id, with a minimum of neuroses incurred; or (2) one has brought the disturbingly incongruent contents of his Id into the consciousness of the Ego, through psychoanalysis, and has thus learned to deal with them in a way that will not render him wholly neurotic, i.e. through sublimation. The third possible scenario is least desirable, but still may serve more often than not to ebb the flow of aggressive tendencies: To have not acknowledged the contents of one’s Id through psychoanalysis or otherwise and to live a lifetime crippled by fits of neurological hysteria. The neuroses (also: hysteria) and sublimation thus serve as the primary defense mechanisms which prevent the predominance of the animalistic rage embodied in the Id. In any scenario in which the above three conditions do not exist, a person will manifest aggressively violent tendencies in even the most inopportune of situations. Finally, the Super-Ego plays an important role in the hierarchy of structures which serve to either prevent or permit the manifestation of aggression. The Super-Ego serves the role of the human conscience, and thereby comprises all of our moralistic and value judgments as human beings. Aggression, as viewed by Western society, is looked upon as favorable, or moralistic, in the sense of “assertiveness”, and frowned upon as amoral in the sense of violent crime. Thus the Super-Ego, through moral appeal to the Ego, serves to keep oneself extricated from any behavior which may compromise his social integrity, i.e. violent and criminal aggression. This explanation can thus account for both forms of aggression mentioned above: assertiveness and violent aggression. The former is the result of the Super-Ego’s approval of such actions, which will be accordingly looked upon as favorable socially. The latter is the result of the Ego’s, and the Super-Ego’s, inability to control the deluge of repressed ideas from the Id, and thus results in violent repercussions. A Jungian Analysis of the Nature of Aggression The Structures of the Psyche and Their Roles in Aggression According to C.G. Jung, the progenitor of the most prominent offspring of Freud’s psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, would have described the origins of human aggression through the interactions among the structures of the Psyche and their respective sub-structures. There are three major structures of the Psyche from which an analysis of human aggression can be made. These three major structures of the Jungian Psyche are those of Consciousness, the Personal Unconscious, and the Collective Unconscious. Consciousness is the rough Jungian equivalent to the Freudian Ego, as it serves as the conscious portion of the Psyche. The purpose of Consciousness, much like in psychoanalysis, is to discover as much as possible about the sub-conscious portions of the Psyche in order to procure or maintain good mental health. This is the process that Jung referred to as Individuation. He describes this phenomenon as follows: “I use the term ‘individuation’ to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological ‘in-dividual,’ that is, a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole’ ” (Hall, 1973, p. 34). The most important sub-structure of the Consciousness is the Jungian Ego, similar to the Freudian Ego except that in Jungian analysis the Ego’s strength is entirely contingent upon the amount of Individuation that one has realized (Hall, 1973). The amount of Individuation that one has undergone may be a decisive factor in whether or not one in inclined to violent aggression. That is to say, as with the weakening of the Freudian Ego, the lack of proper Individuation of the Jungian Ego results in a susceptibility to the backlash of unbridled aggression found deep within the Psyche, in the Collective and Personal Unconscious. The Personal Unconscious, roughly analogous to the Freudian Id, plays perhaps the most important role in the origins of human aggression, particularly through the development of Complexes. A Complex according to Jung was the psychic association of a thought with a particular feeling, i.e. the person experiences a “hang-up” or dominant preoccupation with something or someone (Hall, 1973, p. 36). Complexes may play a pivotal role in violent aggression in that the object with which a Complex is associated, or even environmental cues associated with that object, which may be linked to anger, hatred or contempt may result in a fit of violent aggression, especially at times during which the Ego has undergone a weakening, or regression in terms of its Individuation. For example, if one has a complex related to his father’s aggressive and subversive tendencies associated with contempt, he could easily lash out on somebody whom he associates with an authoritarian personality, without even knowing why he has done it. In the words of Jung, “A person does not have a complex; the complex has him” (Hall, 1973, p. 37). Last, but not least, in a role of paramount influence on the origins of human aggression, due to its cryptic complexities as a construct, is the Collective Unconscious, which bears no remote equivalence in any of Freud’s constructs. It is thus unique because it accounts for an amalgam of experiences shared in evolutionary terms by animals, and most certainly all humans. “[E]volution and heredity provide the blueprints of the Psyche, just as they provide the blueprints of the body (Hall, 1973, p. 39). The Collective Unconscious is therefore the primordial, or the earliest in development, of the structures of the Psyche. It is however not the Collective Unconscious within itself that is so important to a blueprint of aggression, but rather its integral sub-structures, called the archetypes. The Shadow is key to the puzzle of human aggression for men in particular. The Shadow is the archetype that represents one own gender and that influences a person’s relationships with his own sex. Jung, according to Hall (1973), describes the Shadow as the portion of the psyche which contains more of man’s basic animal nature than any other archetype does: Because of its extremely deep roots in evolutionary history, it is probably the most powerful and potentially most dangerous of all the archetypes. It is the source of all that is best and worst in man, especially in his relations with others of the same sex. Because the majority of violent aggression in the Western world can be assumed to occur between members of the same sex (male-to-male), this is by far Jung’s most viable explanation as to the origins of human aggression. But what about the great deal of inter-sexual violence seen in the world today? Yet another archetype of the Collective unconscious may yield an answer as to the origins of human aggression, particularly aggression which transcends one’s own sex. The animus, possessed by females in accordance to men, and the anima, possessed by males in accordance to women, are the blueprints contained within the Psyche that determines ones thoughts, views, and potential relationships with members of the opposite sex. For example, it can hardly be argued that there is a great deal of tension between the two sexes in modern Western culture as a result of the rapid transition of women from a position entirely subordinate to that of men, to a position of near total equality in a matter of several decades—a drop in the bucket on the evolutionary timeline. This in turn has led to, in many cases, a harbored resentment on behalf of men especially whose states-of-mind are trapped in the “good old days” of when women were more tractable. This concept is of course very much false in terms of social justice and equality, but still leads to a distorted anima in the male Psyche of some. Their distorted anima may lead them to see women as usurpers of power and thus create a Complex of resentment, which can thus lead to domestic abuse and other forms of female degradation. Another example of a distorted anima which may lead to inter-sexual aggression involves the scenario of a male child who grows up watching his father beat and/or verbally abuse his mother. The child’s perception of women will be that of a person worthy only of punishment and abuse, and thus this will become his anima. This is often equated to the “vicious cycle” of domestic abuse, as father’s who are abusive to women will more often than not have children who are abusive, and this is the reason why. The distortion of the anima can also work in reverse. A female can develop a distorted animus through similar avenues and also undertake a life in which she has no respect for the thoughts, feelings, or rights of the opposite sex, although it seems much rarer a phenomenon than it actually is. Although the degree of aggressiveness among human beings has yet to be attributed to any particular locus in the human genome, it is possible to make some very convincing and even accurate assumptions based on the theories of Freud and Jung. It is highly doubtful that in any lifetime that aggressiveness will be attributable to a single gene, or even a descript combination of genes as the phenomenon of human aggressiveness is far too complex to be reduced in such a way. It is not uncommon for the everyday “wimp”, with no prior record of aggressive tendencies and no criminal record, to have an off day and all of a sudden butcher fifty innocent people. Accordingly, it is not uncommon for a hardened, aggressive individual to have his off day and decide to react more diplomatically to a situation in which he would have formerly used aggression as his way out. The trends of aggression are hardly consistent among even these two extremes of individuals. We thus find an explanation for at least some, if not all, aggressive episodes and epiphenomenona through the application of Jungian and Freudian constructs. The above dissection of the anatomy of human aggression serves to elucidate the fact that Freudian and Jungian theories, though very similar in their respective ideologies, are two entirely different, yet complimentary constructs which provide some very resonant answers to the questions of the seeming excessiveness of human aggression. Bibliography: Word Count: 2377
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