Fritz Perls on Aggression

Fritz Perls wrote a book in the 1940s titled Ego, Hunger, and Aggression. He wrote a new preface when that book was republished in the 60s and this quote is my favorite:

"A return to the power of aggression from the destruction of cities and people to assimilation and growth...a consummation devoutly to be wished...Bloody unlikely."

Fritz and Laura Perls wrote extensively about the importance of dental aggression—the organismic need to chew things up and break them into digestible amounts, and about what happens when that capacity is repressed or displaced. Overall, they recognized aggression as a force that has a healthy, essential role to play in initiating (moving toward), discernment (breaking things down and sorting), absorbing (what one chooses to swallow), and other important life functions.

The root of the word aggression is “to walk or proceed toward,” and it was initially used to mean "approach" (1570s), from the French aggresser.” That more descriptive meaning is all but lost in usage now.

A few more quotes (slightly paraphrased) from Ego, Hunger, and Aggression:

The more the ability to hurt is inhibited and projected, the more will the child develop a fear of being hurt; and this fear of retaliation, in turn, will produce a still greater reluctance to inflict pain. In all such cases an insufficient use of the front teeth is to be found, together with a general inability to get a grip on life, to get one’s teeth into a task.
Above all, the destructive tendency, which should have its natural biological outlet in the use of the teeth, remains ungratified…. Hunger for mental and emotional food behaves like physical hunger: K. Horney observes correctly that the neurotic is permanently greedy for affection, but that his greed is never satisfied. One decisive factor in this behavior of the neurotic is that he does not assimilate the affection offered to him. He either refuses to accept it, or he deprecates it, so that it becomes distasteful or valueless to him as soon as he has obtained it. Furthermore, this impatient, greedy attitude is responsible more than anything else for the excessive stupidity we find in the world. Just as such people have no patience to chew up real food, so they do not take sufficient time to “chew up” mental food.
…maintain that the use of teeth is the foremost biological representation of aggression. The projection, but also the repression of (or the resistance to) their aggressive functions, is largely responsible for our civilization's deplorable state.
Aggression has one aim in common with most emotions: not senseless discharge, but rather application.
…Emotion needs some kind of contact, but it will not give satisfaction if it is senselessly discharged.

Compiled and introduced by Christine Stewart Price

Fritz Perls on Aggression

Fritz Perls wrote a book in the 1940s titled Ego, Hunger, and Aggression. He wrote a new preface when that book was republished in the 60s and this quote is my favorite:

"A return to the power of aggression from the destruction of cities and people to assimilation and growth...a consummation devoutly to be wished...Bloody unlikely."

A few more quotes (slightly paraphrased) from Ego, Hunger, and Aggression:

The more the ability to hurt is inhibited and projected, the more will the child develop a fear of being hurt; and this fear of retaliation, in turn, will produce a still greater reluctance to inflict pain. In all such cases an insufficient use of the front teeth is to be found, together with a general inability to get a grip on life, to get one’s teeth into a task.
Above all, the destructive tendency, which should have its natural biological outlet in the use of the teeth, remains ungratified…. Hunger for mental and emotional food behaves like physical hunger: K. Horney observes correctly that the neurotic is permanently greedy for affection, but that his greed is never satisfied. One decisive factor in this behavior of the neurotic is that he does not assimilate the affection offered to him. He either refuses to accept it, or he deprecates it, so that it becomes distasteful or valueless to him as soon as he has obtained it. Furthermore, this impatient, greedy attitude is responsible more than anything else for the excessive stupidity we find in the world. Just as such people have no patience to chew up real food, so they do not take sufficient time to “chew up” mental food.
…maintain that the use of teeth is the foremost biological representation of aggression. The projection, but also the repression of (or the resistance to) their aggressive functions, is largely responsible for our civilization's deplorable state.
Aggression has one aim in common with most emotions: not senseless discharge, but rather application.
…Emotion needs some kind of contact, but it will not give satisfaction if it is senselessly discharged.

Compiled and introduced by Christine Stewart Price

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