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PubMed1999

[Not Available].

In his last works, Ferenczi emphasizes the suffering of the child, who is a victim of the seductive parent, and environment. In the Clinical Diary he writes about the consequences of the trauma more dramatically. A part of the personality dies but can be alive again in psychoanalysis. The author tries to examine whether the appearance of these topics in Ferenczi's late papers is connected with sensing the illness, and imminent death. If this theory is correct, we must see a high elaboration level in Ferenczi's reaction. The heavy symptoms of the illness did not lead to narcissistic regression, but to a deepening of empathy, and of the experience of human solidarity.

Child↗

PubMed1999

[Not Available].

We meet two opposite concepts in the discussion of aggression. The first one claims that aggression is an instinctual drive, inborn with the human being. The second one claims that agression is a reaction. Both concepts have strong arguments. Freud's second drive theory introduces the death instinct, on the side of Eros, as the second basic drive of human creatures. Since Freud, most analysts have shared the opinion that aggression is an instinctual drive, but few of them accepted the death instinct. The experiments of Dollard and Miller regarding the relation between frustration and aggression underpin the reaction theory. The question is whether we can integrate the two concepts. The theories and observations of the Budapest school offer the possibility of a synthesis. Ferenczi already shows an emphasis on situations, which increase aggressive tension, for example in "The unwanted child and the death instinct," or in the "Confusion of tongues between the child and the adults." We find a coherent and original theory of agression in the work of Imre Hermann. According to his theory, aggression is a biological capacity of men, mobilised as a reaction in situations, which are founded in the development of the human drive system.

Aggression↗