RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

4) Konrad Lorenz: 0 agresivnosti, Beograd, »Vuk Karadžić«, 1970, p. 47.

thanatos, the death mstinct, which he bears withm him besides eros, the instinct to maintain Uving matter. This instinct tends to destroy individual beings and to return them to their original inorganic state. Part of the instinct which is directed at the outside world is extemalized as an instinct of aggression and destruction. In the opinion of Konrad Lorenz, the naturaUst, aggression is an instinct which exhausts the force of a constantly Uving source of energy and does not have to be a reaction to extemal stimuh. Lorenz considers aggression in animals beneficial, since it serves to maintain the Ufe of mdividuals and the species. In this sense Lorenz does not consider aggression a destmctive principle, as represented by classical psychoanalysts, but an essential part of the organization for preserving Ufe. During man’s development, however, this originaUy beneficial instinct within the species has developed mto the great evil of man. It became an evil »when man came to the stage where, thanks to implements, weapons and social organization, he had overcome threatening dangers, starvation, freezing and the attacks of great beasts, so that these dangers were no longer a selective factor, and it must have been then that an evil form of selection within the species was estabUshed - war. АИ forms of martial virtues which аге considered desirable ideals even today must have developed from them« 4 ). Another factor is that, as opposed to animals in whom inhibition of the aggressive instinct within the species has developed, man has not developed his inhibition of aggression against members of his own species to the same extent, because he was not born with powerful implements for mfhcting death. In other words, aggression in man has lost its original positive function and become a great evil of mankind. Proceeding from the basic assumption of this theory which maintains that aggression is inbom, neither television nor апу other mass medium of communication can have апу part in the development of aggressive behaviour in people. This Љеогу also holds that aggressive energy is

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