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(agressivitÈagressivité)
Aggressivity is one of the central issues that Lacan deals with in his papers in the period 1936 to the early 1950s. The first point that should be noted is that Lacan draws a distinction between aggressivity and aggression, in that the latter refers only to [[violence|violent acts ]] [[act]]s whereas the former is a fundamental relation which underlies not only such acts but many other phenomena also (see Sl, 177). Thus aggressivity is just as present, Lacan argues, in apparently loving acts as in violent ones; it 'underlies the activity of the philanthropist, the idealist, the pedagogue, and even the reformer' (E, 7). In taking this stance, Lacan is simply restating Freud's concept of ambivalence (the interdependence of love and hate), which Lacan regards as one of the fundamental discoveries of psychoanalysis.
Lacan situates aggressivity in the dual relation between the ego and the counterpart. In the MIRROR STAGE, the infant sees its reflection in the mirror as a wholeness, in contrast with the uncoordination in the real body: this contrast is experienced as an aggressive tension between the specular image and the real body, since the wholeness of the image seems to threaten the body with disintegration and fragmentation (see FRAGMENTED BODY).
The consequent identification with the specular image thus implies an ambivalent relation with the counterpart, involving both eroticism and aggression. This 'erotic aggression' continues as a fundamental ambivalence underlying all future forms of identification, and is an essential characteristic of narcissism. Narcissism can thus easily veer from extreme self-love to the opposite extreme of 'narcissistic suicidal aggression' (agression suicidaire narcissique) (Ec, 187).
