The role of aggression and sense in the regulation of interpersonal relations
Abstract
Five qualities have given man his ability to realize his full human potential: 1) an innate predisposition to gregarious life, 2) an aggressive instinct, 3) an aptitude for insight, 4) a capacity for gaining extensive knowledge and skills which are at his disposal independent of instinctual drives, and 5) an urge to acquire speech, enabling him to establish a second signal system as the basis of the unique human form of consciousness. The combination of the qualities 3, 4, and 5 are, as it were, man's accessories in his struggle for existence, and can be used to serve his aggressive needs. - Every cultural development leads in the course of generations to an increase of intellectual awareness, because an increasing share of indispensable knowledge must be passed on verbally. At the same time the importance of direct, practical first-hand experience and imitative learning declines. Especially for those men whose occupations primarily involve theoretical activities a discordance arises between the world of their imaginations and consciously-controlled ways of thought and behaviour on the one hand, and their endothymic impulses, moods and feelings (which mostly originate from the innate predisposition for gregarious life) on the other. If rationalistic processes predominate in shaping forms of social interaction, man will have to manipulate the behaviour of his fellow-men as well as his own mental capacities for emotional distancing, disregarding or even violating the…
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