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28 JANUARY 2009

NO 1393

Aggression

Aggression is a biological response to the threat of danger. Aggression is an inbuilt self-protective mechanism which works to mobilize our combative abilities when we are threatened. Fear is another such mechanism. If a threat comes to us, our aggression may save us by preparing us to fight, or on the other hand, fear may also preserve us by bringing us to run away. Whether we react with aggression or fear, or some combination of the two, will depend on both personality factors and the level of our anxiety, as well as the nature of the threat itself.

It is important for us to remember that different situations are a threat to different types of individuals, and that youth and older people feel threatened in quite different circumstances. Thus an obsessive person feels threatened and reacts aggressively if any remote doubt is cast on his honesty. In a similar way an effeminate man is threatened and reacts aggressively to any reference to his masculinity. Youth reacts the same way where lack of adult status is concerned.

Aggression is closely related to anxiety. In fact it is anxiety which mobilizes our aggression. It is common experience that an anxious person tends to react aggressively. Some people, who constantly feel threatened, have what we term in psychiatry a mild chronic anxiety state. With others it may be some threat of the moment which has made them anxious. In either case they are likely to react aggressively. On the other hand, if a person is relaxed in his ordinary life, he will probably remain calm in the face of a threat. There is no undue increase in anxiety, and he is not likely to react with sudden aggression. We shall see that this relationship between aggression and anxiety is of great practical importance to youth in managing his aggressive impulses.

Different persons interpret different situations as threatening. This is very important, and it has a particular importance as regards frustration. By frustration I mean the thwarting of any basic biological drive. It applies in particular to sex and self-assertion. These are both areas in which youth is very sensitive to frustration. He feels it as a threat, and his aggression is easily mobilized.

Youth has not fully learned the knack of sublimating his aggressive drive. The primitive savage gives his aggression direct expression in combat. But over the centuries, in the gradual process of civilization, man has learned a process of mind by which his primitive aggressive drive can be diverted into socially useful activity. This process is known as sublimation. The aggression is still there, but it is changed in quality and direction. By this means the primitive combativeness becomes the competitiveness of modern business. In a similar way man's primitive aggression may be sublimated into the drive to subjugate the forces of nature.

Man has taken centuries to acquire this ability to sublimate his aggression. The child has not yet learned this knack, and he is likely to express his aggression quite openly. The mature man has the knack; the immature have it only imperfectly; because their reactions still have the characteristics of childhood. Youth is in the process of acquiring the art of sublimation. With him it is still incomplete. This is one reason why the aggression of youth so often finds unexpected and unpredictable outlets.

AINSLIE MEARES

Meares, Ainslie. (1973). Dialogue with Youth. London. Collins Fontana. pp. 218-220.

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