Adrian Perkel, a clinical psychologist from Cape Town, delves into the complexities of human aggression in his latest book. He argues that aggression isn’t inherently hostile but a response to unmet needs and frustrations. By linking Freudian theories with contemporary neuroscience, he reveals how subjective experiences shape our reactions. Perkel also discusses the interplay between aggression and narcissism in relationships, offering insights on how buried feelings can affect dynamics. His approach emphasizes understanding these themes for effective psychological practice.
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Apartheid Inversion
Dr. Perkel's story began in apartheid-era South Africa as a political detainee.
He observed a paradoxical inversion: the interrogators saw themselves as victims.
insights INSIGHT
Hate Precedes Love
Scientifically, hate precedes love, contrary to popular beliefs.
Aggression, in its pure form, aims to restore homeostasis, not to seek conflict.
insights INSIGHT
Aggression's True Aim
Aggression, like the immune system, aims to restore balance, not fight.
Its destructive effects arise from its perversion, not its inherent nature.
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“Aggression is to the mind what the immune system is to the body. It doesn’t seek the fight.” With this perfect mind-body analogy Dr. Perkel proposes a clear way to think theoretically and work clinically with aggression. Throughout the book he links Freud’s formulations of the psyche with contemporary physics and biochemistry. Perkel’s assertion that “Where the aggressive drive goes, so therein lies the solution to many of the psychological problems that present to us in life” is broadly summarized in three essential points:
1. The aggressive drive in the human psyche has the aim of reducing stimuli and excitations brought on by internal and external impingements - it is not looking for a fight.
2. What constitutes a threat or impingement is not necessarily objective - in fact it is always filtered through subjective experience and the UCS associations that are revisited repeatedly giving rise to a lens through which experience is filtered.
3. This experience is driven by memory traces of experience that embed themselves in the UCS and are revisited and hence enacted in a repetitive manner.
“My argument is that what wraps all those three points together is that you have life drive needs yes but they're often unfulfilled they're often frustrated and then we need a second mechanism which is what Freud called the death drive.” Acknowledging that the death drive is contentious in psychoanalysis “in neuroscience it's not contested.”
I knew going into this interview that we would only discuss a few concepts and elaborations from his book. For more of Dr. Perkel’s writing and webinar on this book please go here and here.
New Books in Psychology