A dual approach to human aggression

Can either psychoanalysis or neuroscience help us to understand why Putin entered Ukraine in the early hours of February 2022?  Or, in other words, why write a book about Unlocking the Nature of Human Aggression' which adopts a dual approach involving both Psychoanalysis and a Neuroscience approach to study this question? 

Perkel's book is part of a recently developed approach called 'Neurospsychoanalysis' which attempts to enrich or/and to validate the theories and practices of psychoanalysis with those of the more scientifically based approaches of neuroscience, which maps our human brain structures and neural circuits, and how such biological and chemical processes affect our emotional and cognitive lives. 

Such a collaboration is not yet agreed to be useful by all in the psychoanalysis field, some of whom are mistrustful of it, reasoning that the essentially subjective nature of psychoanalysis cannot fruitfully be associated with the avowedly more scientific and data led approaches of neuroscience. Perkel however is not of their ilk. He claims that the two fields can learn a great deal from each other, and that his book helps create 'a unique theoretical approach to the various manifestations we encounter of individual, group, and geo-political aggression and destructiveness.'  In doing so, his book 'seeks to understand the science of these drives that Freud himself suggested would be possible with time and scientific development'.  

Perkel's book draws much more heavily on psychoanalytic theory and its explanations and relevance for aggression that on emerging neuroscientific knowledge, and his claims such as e.g. 'as we can see, there seems to be a dovetailing of the laws of Physics and the Free Energy Principle and Freuds formulation of the mental apparatus' (p 59) will be more easily understood by scholars of Freud than those of neuroscience.  Also, as a social psychologist, I found his analyses on group violence and aggression  to be  fairly minimal and lacking the lucidity  necessary in differentiating the sources of aggression and violence that are often apparent in the differences between group violence and its elicitation within a group context e.g. of injustices or oppression- rather than an individual context. 

Where the two fields usefully meet however is their joint recognition of the importance of feelings such as humiliation, anger and frustration which often underpin the most monstrous of crimes of aggression both individually and collectively, and which  are often unconscious to either individuals or groups.

His recognition of the role of humiliation felt by Putin because of his perceived betrayal by NATO and its increasing incursions up to the borders of Russia, in contradiction to what he had felt was promised in the early 1990's, provides a useful glimpse into the existing emotional context that must be taken more seriously if compromises that can end the Ukraine/Russian war are to be found. However, while his suggestions that his 'modernized model of the destructive and aggressive drive of the psyche can facilitate better interventions for individual and couple patients' may have some immediate merit for such clients,  his suggestions that his model can assist interventions at systemic and organisational levels is still in need of a great deal of theoretical, policy and practice work to be taken seriously. 

Nevertheless, his book is a brave one, and will add to the existing and developing literature on Neurospsychoanalysis that is burgeoning in academic and in some practice circles today. His book is useful in helping to address the challenge of specialization that is hindering experts in different disciplines from collaborating with each other and as such is to be welcomed.

Professor Mari Fitzduff is author of Our Brains at War: The Neuroscience of Conflict and Peacebuilding, published by Oxford University Press. She is also director of the MA Conflict and Coexistence Programme at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts