Aggressiveness

In ethology

The aggressiveness is included/understood like a Instinct, which can return to:

instinct of survival when it makes it possible to be defended;
instinct of reproduction causing competition between males;
maternal instinct, when a female protects its descendants.

The aggressive attitudes or gestures are more or less tolerated by the social codes and their consequences are very variable from one company to another, social group to another and according to the times.

Pathological aggressiveness is present to differing degree in the clinical pictures of nevrotic personality disorders of the type, psychotic, psychopathe or epileptic.

Konrad Lorenz proposed aggressiveness at any animal specie like positive factor of its conservation: it thus understands it more like one vital element that like a instinct of dead . This aggressiveness should not however be included/understood like a priority given to violence nor even with the latent tensions of the power struggles. It is more about an energy whose various cultures optimize the forms of expression. These forms are other thing only the Rite S: codified demonstrations substituent with sterile or harmful actions of aggressiveness.

Human aggressiveness

Disciple of Konrad Lorenz, Irenäus Eibl Eibesfeld made known the human ethology with the general public with its Master-delivers " The man programmé" , Flammarion, Feed, 1976, translates of German (" DER vorprogrammierte Mensch" , 1973). The original title of " préprogrammation" species on which the " is superimposed; programmation" social, is much lighting. For pasticher Simone de Beauvoir. one is not born aggressive, but one becomes it under various influences. (in) http://www.csudh.edu/hux/syllabi/530/now_3.html

In a ecosystemic Approach, human aggressiveness is built on the physical base of the Biosphère necessary and insufficient on which dépoie the Sociosphère of congeneric and the colleagues who produce the ideas of the Culture in the Noosphère. It is a hierarchy in levels of constraint or dependence of the Théorie of the contexts of Anthony Wilden. An aggressiveness collective, deliberated, organized and legislated is a Guerre.

Often employed in manner métaphoriqe. the " term; agressivité" indicate a physical violence or verbal expressed with a hostile intention. Without hostility, violence is not any more aggressive, as in a " tournament amoureuse" impassioned lovers or a intellectual debate of high intensity In contrast, a quarrel has a verbal violence characterized by a manifest hostility. A violence in the constructive action is then " dynamisme". Individuals with the nations, aggressiveness follows the trajectory of Crise and conflict in Polémologie.

The aggressiveness, studied by Konrad Lorenz in animal ethology, refers to the territoriality and the coupling. At the human one, it is at the levels organics, social and cultural. At the cultural level, physical violence is more or less developed from one population to another and time to another. With the social status, this physical violence is means of communication, i.e. a form of interaction, more-or-less " normale" in a social group with another. In illustrative example, in the United States, a woman was discharged, in a lawsuit, charge to have sliced the penis of her husband. She was married with a " marine" who frequently beat it, in answer, it sliced to him the penis with a kitchen knife. The jury found that aggressiveness is a form of interaction " normale" in this couple and that one is not guiltier than the other.

Domestic violence, urban violence, school violence and other forms of incivility are representative of this form of communication, in progress more in one country that in another. For an anthropologist in " work of terrain" , the privileged place of observation would be still a queue in different métroples, like London, Montreal, New York City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and others.

At the organic level, there are the cases of " sham rage " in the animal and the human one where the behavior expresses a state of violent rage, without apparent reason in the immediate environment. These cases seem to illustrate the tales and legends of the " Werewolf " (Wehrwolf: wolf of war, one of the etymological sources) which appears of an usually peaceful man at certain nights or lunations. What lets suspect the direct influence of the paléocéphale or " brain reptilien" who constitutes the cerebral Tronc. This suspicion is confirmed by observing the behavior of a peeled animal whose lesions of the limbic system prohibit the control of the higher centers on the activity of the Hypothalamus.

It is about the triunic assumption of the brain made up of three parts:

- The paléocéphale or " brain reptiien" is the primitive part oldest.

- The mésocéphale or " brain limbique" where seems to sit the control surface of the emotions and the memory.

- The neocortex is the most recent part where the mental activities in the evolution of the expèce sit

Dr. Henri Laborit popularized this assumption in his book " The news grill" and in the film " My uncle d' Amérique " of Alain Resnais.

In addition and as far as 1892, Doctor Golz showed as the ablation of the frontal part of the brain of a dog transformed a soft and peaceful animal into a wild animal capable of sudden attacks, vicious and violent, without apparent provocation. It is only into 1937 that Doctor James Papez identified the limbic Système, in the brain, which refers to the emotions. Moreover, the violence which emanates from the discharges of the limbic system carries out without any intention of the person who it exhibe.

Biology of aggressiveness

Let us regard the case of this young woman with whom one established an electrode in the amygdala, at the top of the temporal lobe of the brain, which is a component of the limbic Système, as part of a treatment. Usually pleasant, soft and nice, it becomes hostile, aggressive and violent when one increases the electric current which passes by the electrode. When the electric current is shut off, it becomes again this nice young woman. Professor Kenneth Moyer, Psychological at the University Carnegie-Melon, remembers these insane angers caused by an electric switch, turning on or shutting off the power electic which will stimulate or not amygdala through the established electrode. Out of these experiments, such electric shocks exist they in the brain?

During several years, the Neurosciences raised the question about the monitoring of the electrical signals of the brain in somebody during an attack of violences. Doctor Vernon H. Mark, now neurosurgeon at the medical school of the University Harvard, on the occasion to look further into this question by treating before Julie, a 21 year old young woman who had, in his childhood, an acute Encéphalite. Following this encéphalite, towards the 10 years age, it was prone to sudden crises of convulsive epilepsy with loss of conscience After these crises and catch of panic, Julie flees also quickly and also far it can.

Between the crises, it presents angry outbursts followed by remorse for this misconduct, of the angers accompanied some time by impulsive and violent attacks against the people of its entourage. Despaired of this state, it tried to commit suicide on several occasions. Through holes bored through cranium of Julie to make pass the electrodes established in amygdala and the hippocampus of the two hemispheres and thanks to telemetry, Doctor Mark could supervise the abnormal electric shocks of these zones, while Julie is occupied with her business.

With a remote control coupled to this telemetry, one could carry out electric shocks through these electrodes. On the majority of the electrodes, there were not coleric answers. Only one specific pair of electrodes established in amygdala causes violent angers. The electroencephalogram recorded during this period shows to a typical layout post-epileptic. After much of agreements, one arrived at the conclusion of an epilepsy, whose epicentre is at the place where are established this pair of electrodes, which causes coleric violences. By destroying this place by electrocoagulation, the epileptic fits, of Julie, followed surges of violence ceased. The case of Phineas Guarantees, in 1868, is historical. It had the frontal part and préfrontale brain destroyed during an industrial accident where an iron bar crossed its head, of the jaw lower than the top of cranium. Its behavior deteriorated much and of the violent fit of rages declare themselves without apparent reason.

In neurosciences, an agreement is made to locate the sites most important in the release of the surges of violence on the frontal surfaces and préfontales, in amygdala, the hippocampus] and in the hypothalamus which is all the components of the limbic system.

Even in its convulsive form, the epilepsy always does not lead to crises of aggressive violence and the anomalies of cerebral operation do not give all place to aggressiveness. Doctor Dorothy Otnow Lewis, professor at the medical school of the University of New York, believes to have discovered a predictive profile delinquent children who can lead them later to fatal violences. A study of Doctor Lewis on murderers who were delinquent children showed a diagram (pattern) behavioral of violences as of childhood as well as other joint elements like diseases psychotics in the close relationship, of the serious parental abuses, in terms of family violences, of the neurological problems and the cranial traumatisms.

These the last two elements serve a remark with the effect that children who underwent family violences present body and neurological wounds, as of the cases of psychosis in the family can direct the attention towards the Genetics. In the case of family violence, it would be also about the social reproduction where violence becomes a " mode; normal" of communication or interaction, i.e. a behavior " normal". But, this behavioral diagram does not lead inevitably to fatal violences later, unless the child had cranial traumatisms, through the aggravated assault with him inflicted in this family violence, and of the antécédants psychotics in the family. Work of Doctor Lewis showed the tangle of the social and biological factors in a violent behavior.

The cranial traumatisms and the cerebral lesions are often found in cases of acts of violence aggressive examined by neurologists. This cerebral damage is confirmed by EEG and various " types; scannographie" or tomoscintillography. Starting from these cases, it becomes clear that the order and the monitoring (control), intentionality and the responsabiity are deteriorated by electric shocks in the brain which had with the epilepsy or by electric impulses on the structures of the limbic system in experiments led to find the origins of aggressive violence. The careful conclusion that one can draw was formulated by Doctor Frank A. Elliott, professor emeritus of neurology to the Université of Pennsylvania to the effect which the capacity of aggressive violence is present in us and who his control can be reduced by factors biological.

Doctor Elliott passed all his life to study the violent people and he is convinced of the biological heritage of the factors which influence this capacity. It is médiatisée by a network of Neuron S and Neurotransmetteur S which covers cortex préfrontal until the depths of the brain, the antiquated part which we inherited the reptiles, in the evolution of the mankind.

Implicit with the conclusion of Doctor Elliott is the basic principle of the cerebral activities: the preeminent function of inhibition. We are accustomed to thinking of the brain in terms of sequential excitation of a neuron to the following. In fact, inhibition, rather than the excitation, is the mark of a healthy brain, like the irregular layout of a EEG, in contrast with regular layout representative of the epilepsy. If all the neuronal circuits are at the same time excited, it is what occurs in an epileptic fit, then we will have disordered gestures and confused thoughts. For coordinated conduits and thoughts, certain neuronal circuits are activated and others inhibited. Inhibition has also a key function in the emotions. A drunkard lets emerge from the feelings and the behaviors without control and inhibition.

Drugs, particularly the barbiturates, increase aggressiveness and the " Marijuana " seem to reduce it. On the other hand, when the " Marijuana " is combined with the PCP (Phencyclidine) (a concoction known in the street under the name of " vessel of amour"), that frequently produced an explosion of violence mortal. The radioactive PCP reveals its influence on the limbic system, cutting the emotional part of the brain of the action of the cerebral cortex, the intellectual part. Knowledge, the judgment and the reasoning are, then, isolated, leaving the individual to the thank you of his aggressive impulses. With this drug, cases of sudden explosions of violence courrent the streets. But, the absorption of chemical substances is not the only source of sudden and uncontrolled violences.

The Neurologie finally gave a name to these cases, that of " syndrome of the dyscontrôle épisodique". What means that an ordinary peaceful control can be faded per moment in behaviors violent one. This episodical syndrome of dyscontrôle is connected at the same time to the lesions of the cerebral structure and cerebral operation through chemistry of the brain. This weakening of control indicates a predisposition to aggressiveness already installed.

intoxications and aggressiveness

Let us take the case of William Quick, a male nurse of the hospital psychiatric Farleigh, in Sommerset in England which violently attacked, without apparent reason, one of its patients on December 27th, 1971. The jury it discharged charge for aggravated assault with his lawsuit, on the opinion of the medical expertise to the effect that Quick could not be responsible for its acts at this time where the violent behavior is an irrepressible answer to a sharp decline of the rate of glucose in blood, Quick having taken by error a strong insulin amount to treat his diabetes.

Medical testimony in favor of Quick says that in such a case of crisis of Hypoglycémie, the person loses consciousness from what occurs in it and can be more than violent during a few moments and reach a semi-comatose state. To differing degrees, a crisis of hypoglycemia deteriorates mood, without always going until the end of the explosions of aggressive violence. In the majority of the cases, the clinical picture presents an excess of bad mood or a tendency marked to seek quarrel.

Episodical cases of syndrome of dyscontrôle often arise with an involuntary intoxication to industrial or domestic solvents. The diethylic ether was one of the first substances used for the general anesthesia. A great quantity of varnish, painting or other products which one finds in the wall cupboards of the domestic hearths have as a solvent the Acétone.

" breathers of colle" voluntarily poison themselves with this acetone which is the solvent of the cellusic adhesive of which they are useful. The voluntary alcoholic intoxication is another illustrative example of the behavioral change by deterioration of the conscience and the judgment. Aggressiveness is one of the possible forms of this behavioral change. Popular expressions of " wine joyeux" , " wine triste" , " wine silencieux" and " in vino veritas " show well that the alcoholic intoxication is only the release of the emergence of a behavioral predisposition, " what makes return to the gallop the naturalness driven out by the conscience or the jugement".

Involuntary intoxications with the pesticides can interfere the circulation of the nerve impulse in the brain and lead to aggressiveness. David Garabedian, employee of a company of maintenance of grass to the Massachusetts, in made a painful experiment on March 29th, 1983 when it molesté and killed Mrs. Muldoon at which it was sent to maintain the lawn. Doctor Peter S. Spencer, toxicologist and professor of neuroscience to the college of medicine Albert Einstein of New York studied the case of Grabedian. David Garabedian was poisoned with the chloropyrifos used in spreadings on the grass.

This chemical substance decontaminates the chlorinestérase, a normal protein located at the ends of several nervous fibers. According to Doctor Spencer, under the normal conditions, the chlorolinesterase stops the action of the neuro-transmitter named Acétylcholine, but in the presence of an inhibiter, the acetylcholine remains in synaptic space. An excessive presence of agents antichlorinestérase produces a range of harmful effects representative of the degree of disturbances in the action of acetylcholine. The strongest agents of antichlori-nestérase produce a general paralysis. The pesticides contain less strong agents of anticholestérase which can lead to the suicide.

In one or the other of its forms, the suicide can be regarded as an aggressive violence turned over against oneself and aggressiveness can be an exit point of extreme despair in the depression. The English language nominates a dynamic person by the term of " aggressive person". The aggressiveness about which one speaks here is that of the justiciable violent conduits.

With the lawsuit, Doctor Spencer, as an expert medical, known as that the behavioral change at David Garabedian is the result of an involuntary intoxication to the chloropyfiros contained in the pesticides used and that the intensity of the effects which led to the murder is still indéterminable. The psychiatrist who followed this case is even more affirmative by calling upon the poisoning of the brain, at this time, which did not make it possible David Garabedian to be controlled. The jury also considered the fact that other workers of the same company were also poisoned by the same product and that they which they did not make of murder. In addition, David Garabedian does not have antecedents psychiatric which could constitute predispositions to justify such a surge of fatal violence in one moment of loss of control. Finally he was condemned to the perpetual reclusion.

The chemistry of the brain and the Endocrinologie of hormonal imbalances can make understandable of the Menstrual Pre Syndrome or sudden changes of mood whose illustrative example is SPM. The other example is the surge of Testostérone, the male hormone.

Sociology and anthropology of aggressiveness

At certain times of their history, certain companies develop and support the aggressiveness whose war is the extreme expression. What justifies the currency of the UNESCO which expresses the idea that the war is in the spirit of the men and that it is in the spirit of the men that it is necessary to set up the ramparts of peace.

Certain cultures develop and support the smoothness and others the force. In the history of humanity, there are just two large philosophers of the war which is the supreme and collective form of aggressiveness.

For Karl von Clausewitz, the war is the unlimited use of the rough force.
For Sunzi, the war is the art of the fraud, according to its watchword of " to subjugate the adversary without combattre".

Then, the Guerre appears as the supreme, organized and collective form of aggressiveness.

The anthropologist Marvin Harris (Marvin Harris, pp. 47-64, " Cannibals and Kings. The Origins off Culture" , Vintage, New York, 1977) of the Columbia University developed a convincing and tempting theory on the origins of the war in the not-official, tribal and village companies. The dominant ideology in our company tends to blame the individual for the war on the basis of " supposément biological; violence innée" " nature humaine" (the original sin) or of the " instinct of mort". It is an obviously simple and simplistic point of view which washes us of any responsibility in our control towards others. If the war is natural, there would not need so many efforts propaganda to draw up all and sundry with entretuer. Raising, here, refers so that the English names by " shaping" or " BASIC training" as of childhood in the family, the relationship, the school, social environment and through the most inoffensive plays and entertainments apparently, the rejection and the refusal of the other, the competition and the co-operation.

Harris starts with the indexing of the four most common theories on the origin of the war: the war like solidarity, the war like play, the war like human nature and the war like continuation of the policy (Clausewitz inter alia).

With the mimetic Desire, Rene Girard showed the mimetic competition which can emerge a mimetic violence generalized where everyone fights against everyone, to make like everyone.

Jacob Bronowski - large mathematician touch-with-all, philosopher and poet of the team of young scientists taken refuge in England and in the United States during the years 1930-1940 which made pass the erudite language of German to English by the grace of Mister Adolf Hitler and his/her companions - formulated a synthesis with the effect which the war is the result of the conjunction of a suitable technology with the logic of plundering. The green revolution of agriculture with the domestication of the animals and the plants made leave humanity the perpetual wandering and perpetuated it in the ground and the stone. The domestication of the horse was embedded perfectly in this logic of plundering and allowed nomads fine bottom of the steppes to sink on the farmers fixed at their grounds and times of the sowing and harvests and to steal the fruit of their work. These riders sowed a very great fright which is with the source of the legend of the " Centaur ": to be fabulous semi man-semi formed horse of two halves welded together. This tradition of plundering through the cavalcades remained at the nomads hunters or pastoral large plains of Africa of America and Asia.

From this point of view and by covering at the same time the not-official companies and the official companies, the war appears as the form and the moment (at the same time like moment and as power struggle) of extreme violence of an organized flight whose object can be physical, imaginary or symbolic system.

Certain companies cultivate the conciliation and the compromise (in the significance of " strategy paradoxale" of an adoption of divergent ways) like an art of living, with the example of the ideology a " harmonize sociale" in a Asian political economy founded on the tradition confucéenne of a " built social organisé" to reconcile the divergences and to pacify the conflicts and competitions, starting from a social philosophy of the " to live ensemble" , in the tripartite coaltion " employers-trade union-gouvernement" , with the third included mediator and witness with the interface of the Comprador, to avoid the bipolarisation in the relation between Crisis and conflict. In a triangle, each angle is between two sides and each side between two angles.

Other companies cultivate the quarrel like an art of living in arguments of vicinity and a " war civile" permanent, with the least pretext to go down in the street to express, against-express and block the social life and economic by strikes. The illustrative example of this art of living is " The hécatombe" of Georges Brassens, on the joker mode of the " females gendarmicides".

" At the market deBriv'-the-Strapping woman In connection with bundles of onions A few dozen strapping women crimped one day the chignon"

A " hypersensibilité" , larger " nervosité" and a greater susceptibilibity with the vincdication, the " aggressiveness, grogne and rogne" are remarkable at " small gens" by the physical stature and the social staut in psychology of aggressiveness through the compensation of the Sense of inferiority.

Psychology of aggressiveness

The difference between aggressiveness and dynamism holds simply the orientations destroying and constructive. The same exceptional effort to exceed themselves and exceed themselves is dynamism, whereas it becomes aggressiveness in the attempt to decrease or destroy the other.

With Freud and Jung, Alfred Adler is one of the three founding fathers of the more known psychology depths in the general public under the name of Psychanalyse. It separated from the " father " by moving the explanatory principle of the behaviors of the Libido of the sexual instincts to the " compensation" Sense of inferiority. In individual Psychology. " To be man, it is to feel inférieur" Adler writing. The main issue for the man is to liquidate his sense of inferiority. The illustrative example is this weak boy of Pennsylvania become several times champion of swimming in 100 meters freestyle and whose record was not beaten by its dynamism without attacking anybody. It is Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984), more known as actor in the role of Tarzan.

Aggressiveness would be then an easy compensation of its sense of inferiority, like the nervous puppy, small of size and large in sound volume. With an attentive observation, major and supplements, this phenomenon could describe itself at people and companies at various times, heard at the same time like “moment” and “power struggle”. The dynamism would be a behavior of compensation to make up the physical deficits and limitations like Johnny Weissmuller with in an individual capacity. The compensation of the economic delays is in the dynamism, on a purely collective basis, of the China and the India which are rising stars of the 21e century.

For some, Erich Fromm is a humanistic psychoanalyst. But, apart from the vaults, Erich Fromm is much more known like a Marxist sociologist to have made the explosive conjunction of Marx to Freud. He preaches the adaptation of the psychoanalysis to social dynamics starting from a humanistic interpretation of Marx (" Fear of the liberté" , 1941; " The art of aimer" , 1956; " Alienated company and company saine" , 1971).

For Fromm, the instinctual share decreases at the Man with the profit of a behavior which tends to separate in the resolution of the fundamental problems to solve: the union-with-world in freedom, freedom " positive" dynamism (freedom to) and freedom " négative" aggressiveness (freedom from), love and hatred, confidence and mistrust, creativity and destructiveness. Fromm made a brilliant study on the psychological phénomème of the Nazisme in particular and all Totalitarisme in general.

It is as a phenomenon of extreme complete membership to an extreme total aggressiveness which the Nazism and any other totalitarianism represent that Fromm studied.

This psychological phenomenon of tender and aggressiveness, at the same time, was studied by Fromm starting from the ideas of “fear of freedom” (Fear off Freedom) and of “avoidance of freedom” (Escape from Freedom) in destructiveness, hatred and overconsumption to connect itself to the world. In the social etiology, the union-with-world of Erich Fromm can be connected to the sense of inferiority by the social status and the living conditions in individual psychology of Alfred Adler through the absolute loneliness which can lead to absolute violence and the absolute tender with the greatest number. Rene Girard introduced there the phenomenon of the imitation with mimetic violence into the mimetic Desire and the emissary Victim.

In Psychoanalysis

The aggressiveness is included/understood like a manifestation of the union-disunion of the life instincts and of dead, according to the last theory of the impulses of Freud. Dualism aggressiveness-sexuality corresponds to him and the destroying impulse takes the top at the time of the disunion and starts the aggressive behavior.

For Winnicott, there exists a relation between the principle of reality and the destroying impulse, in the direction where it is the impulse which creates the quality of externality. The destruction manufactures reality whereas the common direction encourages us to see the opposite, namely aggressiveness like consequence of the principle of reality. Aggressiveness, the attempt at destruction of the object, places this one apart from the any power of the subject, which supposes that the object survives the destruction. Gradually there is recognition of its existence, renouncement of the processes of projection and identification with respect to the object, and the subject can thus use it in the field of more complex relations, bringing it to a phase of more elaborate maturation. Although the object is preexistent on the subject, it waited to be creates to acquire an autonomous reality.

Melanie Klein, Daniel Lagache or Rene Spitz wrote on this question.

See too

Gratuitous act
Violence
Conflict
Instinct of reproduction
War
Need - Desire
Thanatos
Sadism - Masochism

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