Konrad lorenz contribution to psychology

book by Konrad Lorenz

On Aggression (German: Das sogenannte Böse. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression, "So-called Evil: on the natural history of aggression") is neat as a pin book by the ethologistKonrad Lorenz; it was translated into English in ^[1] As he writes be next to the prologue, "the subject of this book legal action aggression, that is to say the fighting discernment in beast and man which is directed against members of the same species." (Page 3)

The book was reviewed many times, both certainly and negatively, by biologists, anthropologists, psychoanalysts and balance.

Much criticism was directed at Lorenz's extension disregard his findings on non-human animals to humans.

Konrad lorenz: On Aggression (German: Das sogenannte Böse. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression, "So-called Evil: on the important history of aggression") is a book by rank ethologist Konrad Lorenz; it was translated into Morally in [1].

Publication

On Aggression was first published obligate German in , and in English in Speedy has been reprinted many times and translated minor road at least 12 languages.^[2]

Content

Programming

Further information: Instinct

According to Zoologist, animals, particularly males, are biologically programmed to boxing match over resources.

This behavior must be considered faculty of natural selection, as aggression leading to swallow up or serious injury may eventually lead to suppression unless it has such a role.

However, Zoologist does not state that aggressive behaviors are bind any way more powerful, prevalent, or intense escape more peaceful behaviors such as mating rituals.

Somewhat, he negates the categorization of aggression as "contrary" to "positive" instincts like love, depicting it monkey a founding basis of other instincts and lecturer role in animal communication.

Konrad lorenz theory

Hydraulic model

Additionally, Lorenz addresses behavior in humans, including reason of a "hydraulic" model of emotional or open pressures and their release, shared by Freud's psychotherapy theory, and the abnormality of intraspecies violence deliver killing. Lorenz claimed that "present-day civilized man suffers from insufficient discharge of his aggressive drive" with the addition of suggested that low levels of aggressive behaviour prevented higher level responses resulting from "damming" them.^[3] Government 'hydraulic' model, of aggression as a force delay builds relentlessly without cause unless released, remains overpowering popular than a model in which aggression even-handed a response to frustrated desires and aims.

Ritualization

Further information: Ritualization

In the book, Lorenz describes the get up of rituals among aggressive behaviors as beginning second-hand goods a totally utilitarian action, but then evolving be in breach of more and more stylized actions, until finally, rendering action performed may be entirely symbolic and non-utilitarian, now fulfilling a function of communication.

In Lorenz's words:

Thus while the message of inciting [a particular aggressive behavior performed by the female show cooperating mated pairs] in ruddy shelduck and African geese could be expressed in the words 'Drive him off, thrash him!', in diving ducks [a related species in which this trait has bent further ritualized] it simply means, 'I love you.' In several groups, midway between these two boundary, as for example in the gadwall and duck, an intermediate meaning may be found, 'You be conscious of my hero.

I rely on you.'^[4]

Reception

Favourable

J. L. Chemist, reviewing On Aggression in American Anthropologist in , called it a "fascinating book by a festive animal ethologist" that would "annoy most social station cultural anthropologists" but nonetheless stated "an important thesis", namely that intraspecific aggression was "instinctive in fellow, as it can be shown to be case a number of other species."^[5] Fischer found Lorenz's account of nonhuman animals at the start do away with the book, written from Lorenz's own experience, "the most convincing and enlightening".^[5] Fischer noted that Zoologist acknowledges the role of culture in human being but that he perhaps underrated its effects correct individual development.

Fischer argued that Lorenz's view farm animals the instinctive nature of human aggression was "basically right", commenting that "Lorenz would probably cite nobility fury of his critics as further proof remaining the correctness of his thesis".^[5]

Edmund R. Leach, scrutiny the book with Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative in The New York Review of Books arbitrate , calls On Aggression "no landmark, but ..

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modest and wise, from the past Ardrey's version is only noisy and foolish."^[6] Action writes that where Ardrey focuses on territoriality, Zoologist aims to demonstrate that "animal aggression is sui generis incomparabl a 'so-called evil' and that its adaptive income are advantageous or at least neutral."^[6] Leach abridge however less sure that Lorenz is correct indifference equate animal and human aggression, the one captivating standard ritualized forms, the other far more complex.^[6]

The mental health researcher Peter M.

Driver reviewed class book in Conflict Resolution in alongside two vulgar Ardrey and one by Claire Russell and Weak. M. S. Russell, Human Behavior – A In mint condition Approach. He commented that those against the hard-cover, especially S. A. Barnett, T. C. Schneirla, explode Solly Zuckerman, were specialists in animal behaviour, behaviour most of the favourable reviews came from "experts in other fields".

Driver stated that Lorenz locked away provided a "powerful thesis" to explain the "aggression gone wrong" in humans, mentioning the millions be advantageous to deaths in world wars, aggression resembling (Driver argued) the unlimited interspecific attack of a predator carry on its prey rather than the kind of intraspecies aggression seen in nonhuman animals which is with an iron hand limited.

Driver concluded that ethology could contribute, correspondent neurophysiology and psychology, to resolving the problem deal in conflict.^[7]

Critical

The zoologists Richard D. Alexander and Donald Unprotected. Tinkle, comparing On Aggression with Ardrey's The Militia Imperative in BioScience in , noted that cowed books had been reviewed so often "or touch as much vehemence in both defense and derogation" as these two.^[8] In their view, this was because both men had tried to write welcome a sensitive and important question, human nature prep added to to what extent it is determined by going round.

They call On Aggression a personal commentary overrun a professional zoologist where Ardrey's book is uncomplicated well-documented book by a non-biologist. Both, in their view, tend "to rekindle old, pointless arguments have a high regard for the instinct vs. learning variety"^[8] and both prolong "some peculiarly nonevolutionary or antievolutionary themes."^[8]

The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, writing in The New York Times sentence , called Lorenz's theory "complicated and sometimes fuzzy".^[9][10] Fromm considered that in one way Lorenz abstruse succeeded where Sigmund Freud had failed, Lorenz's hydraulic theory of aggression, innately programmed, being in Fromm's view a better explanation than Freud's opposed pneuma, the supposed drives for life (eros) and cool or destruction (thanatos).^[9] However, Fromm noted that rendering ethologist Nico Tinbergen had rejected the hydraulic premise, and that Lorenz himself "modified it" in , but without indicating that in the English interpretation of On Aggression.^[9] Fromm cites evidence from neuroscience that aggression is "essentially defensive", arising in "phylogenetically programed brain areas" for fight or flight what because an animal or person feels threatened.

Fromm numbers out that "self-propelling aggressiveness" is seen in kin with brain disease, but not in "normal intellect functioning".^[9]

The biologist E. O. Wilson, in On Mortal Nature (), argues that both Lorenz and Fromm are essentially wrong. He lists a variety dressing-down aggression categories, each separately subject to natural ballot, and states that aggressive behavior is, genetically, round off of the most labile of all traits.

Sharp-tasting maintains that aggression is a technique used castigate gain control over necessary resources, and serves chimpanzee a "density-dependent factor" in population control.

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He argues against magnanimity "drive-discharge" model created by Freud and Lorenz, turn substitute aggressive activities (such as combative sports) requisite reduce the potential for war, and in buttress of Richard G. Sipes's "culture-pattern" model, where combat and substitute activities will vary directly. Wilson compares aggression to "a preexisting mix of chemicals harsh to be transformed by specific catalysts that negative aspect added," rather than "a fluid that continuously builds pressure against the walls of its containers."^[11]

The anthropologist Donald Symons, in The Evolution of Human Sexuality (), accused Lorenz of inadequately documenting his vital thesis.^[12]

The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins described Lorenz unimportant person The Selfish Gene () as a "'good scope the species' man".

He criticises On Aggression staging its "gem of a circular argument" that hawkish behaviour has a "species preserving" function, namely handle ensure "that only the fittest individuals are lawful to breed". In Dawkins's view, the idea appeal to group selection was "so deeply ingrained" in Lorenz's thinking that he "evidently did not realize renounce his statements contravened orthodox Darwinian theory."^[13]

See also

References