Aggression may be dealt with in various ways. It may simply be dissipated. We see this in simple form when a child is thwarted by his parents. His aggression is aroused, but he cannot give it direct expression or he will be punished. He is not mature enough to sublimate it. His aggression is just dissipated in his behaviour. He stamps about, handles his toys roughly and expresses an aggressive attitude to those about him. In a more sophisticated way in adult life we dissipate our aggression by playing games or by watching sports in which we identify ourselves with the players and experience their emotions.
Aggression can also be displaced, so that our aggressive impulses toward one person or situation are vented on some completely innocent party. The husband is frustrated at work by his boss. His aggression is aroused. He cannot give it direct expression, but on reaching home he blows up and vents it on his unsuspecting wife. Aggression can also be controlled by act of will. In fact, learning to control aggression is one of the most important experiences of childhood and adolescence. But this control, and the awareness of the necessity for it, creates a further stress, and the individual is tense and anxious as a result of it.
The person who is controlling a good deal of aggression is vulnerable to minor additional stresses. This is an important factor in the cause of bad temper. Father tolerates the bickering of the children for a long time, then he suddenly blows up and punishes them more severely than he intended.
An intelligent adult man with a good work record came to see me, saying that he was becoming increasingly on edge so that he was likely to blow up with his wife and family at the least provocation. He had not realized that anything was wrong with himself until a few days previously. He had burst into a temper with his wife, and in the heat of his rage had thrown to the ground the watch which she had given him for his birthday. He then jumped on it until it was broken to pieces. He was humiliated and alarmed that he could have done such a thing.
With further discussion it became clear that he had been becoming more and more tense as a result of increasing pressures at work.
He went about practising the relaxing exercises with real determination. His wife was understanding, and her support did much to relieve his sense of humiliation. She wrote to me some weeks later, saying that he was still doing the same amount of work, but things had never been better.
Many of us, perhaps all of us, have particular topics on which we are especially vulnerable. In these areas we are easily hurt, and our aggression is likely to flare up.
A man in his middle fifties held a responsible executive position, which he filled with reasonable ease and without any sign of undue aggression. He had always been extremely attached to his mother, so much so that it had been a constant source of conflict between him and his wife. The mother had died about a year previously, but instead of being better as one might have expected, things between the husband and wife were so much the worse. The wife had innocently suggested that he put away some of his mother’s personal belongings. He had flown into a blind rage and struck her.
He was encouraged to do the relaxing exercises, and at the same time to concentrate on calm and understanding thoughts about his mother and wife. When I last saw him he was still a little touchy about his mother, but much easier than previously.
Aggression need not be such a destructive force. The same impulse that drives us to feel like punching someone in the nose can be diverted, and used to drive us on in whatever enterprise our life situation places us. By this drive we achieve goals in commerce, industry, and science. In a more personal way we obtain the drive to. seek things out and to understand, both the material aspects of life and the abstract, in art and beauty.
Anxiety is the price we pay when our victory over our aggression is incomplete. But the reader who is seeking relief from mental tension is reminded that the struggle for inner control is not won by a fixed-jaw-and-clenched-fists attempt to discipline oneself at all costs. In this way we may manage to hold our aggression in check, and to stop it from breaking forth, but the effort of holding it in creates tension to the limit of our control. So, we must aim to establish a pattern of life in which our overt aggression is not easily aroused. We can do this by understanding the factors involved, by using our native aggression in creative fashion and by practising our relaxing mental exercises. These three approaches are not separate entities but are a unity in themselves. Understanding, creative use of aggression, and ease of mind are one. This integration is to be our aim.
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