A agressividade no quadro da primeira dualidade instintual freudiana

Abstract

This work aims to analyze how Freud inserted aggressiveness in the hypothesis of his first instinctual duality. According to our analysis, we can divide the treatment given to aggression into two periods. The first, from the beginning of his theory until 1913, in which aggressiveness is mainly approached as a manifestation of sexual instincts, through the Oedipus complex, the instinct of domination and sadism. During this period, the author discusses aggressive and hostile thoughts and behaviors, in which the erotic component was present in its manifestations. The second period begins in 1914 with the formulation of Narcissism: an introduction (1914/2018) and continues up until the texts that precede the formulation of the second instinctual duality, inserted in 1920. In this period we can see aggressiveness approached as an expression of the ego instincts. In this second division, aggressive manifestations are addressed in different areas: in the development of the ego, the influence on sexual instincts, the psychic instances that constitute the ego, and in the relationship between the individual and civilization. The whipping fantasy, described in ―A child is being beaten‖ (1919/2018), on the other hand, can be considered one of the transitional works between the first and second instinctual dualities. The hypotheses of the aggressive manifestations discussed in that work are, in part, different from the hypotheses about aggressiveness elaborated between 1914 and 1920 and closer to the ones developed in the second instinctual duality; therefore, we chose to approach these fantasies after the second division of aggression, mentioned above. However, it is worth mentioning that, in the second period of this division, Freud maintained aggression as a manifestation of the ego instincts, with some theoretical arrangements, which obscured the reader's understanding of his hypotheses and did not explain aggressive behaviors that do not fit those hypotheses.