Gestalt Review, 16(2):145-161, 2012 145

Inclusive and Exclusive Aggression:

Some (Gestalt) Reflections

PHILIP LICHTENBERG, PH.D.

ABSTRACT

Aggression – the energetic, forceful, protective quality of a

person in relation – is differentiated into inclusive aggression
and exclusive aggression following Angyal’s (1965) conception of
universal ambiguity. This paper compares these differently-based
aggressions with respect to initiative, assertion, criticism and
self-criticism, anger and parenting. It also refers to experiences
in being the object of these varying aggressions from others, and
being affected by the self-directed aggressions of the other. The
aim is to promote inclusive aggression more generally so that
citizens are less prone to support wars and engage in violence.1

Background

Wars and violence are all too common in the modern world, and any ideas
we can contribute to lessen their tolerance by citizens of the world may be

1
Many have contributed to this work, but three individuals have made concrete suggestions that
are incorporated into the text – Catherine B. Gray, Susan Gregory, and Lisa Pozzi – for which I am
grateful.

Philip Lichtenberg, Ph.D., is Mary Hale Chase Professor Emeritus at Bryn

Mawr College, where he taught at the School of Social Work and Social
Research for more than thirty-five years. Co-Founder of the Gestalt
Therapy Institute of Philadelphia (GTIP), he was CoDirector and Principal
Faculty until 2010. He continues on at GTIP as a Faculty member and as
Secretary of the Board of Directors.

©2012 Gestalt International Study Center

146 inclusive and exclusive aggression

worth attention. In 1951, Paul Goodman (Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman,

1951, pp. 339 ff.) suggested that because we do not live out aggression well in
everyday life, we lay the psychological basis for acceptance without adequate
countervailing struggle concerning the many wars about us, and the massacres
of children in schools in the USA, Norway, Russia, etc. With the decline of
capitalism as a basis for organizing society, a system based on aggression,
the need for countervailing effort is even enhanced. If we can learn to deal
with aggression in everyday life, to promote those ways of being aggressive
that build community, and to manage well those ways that are destructive of
common welfare, we can possibly change how the world works; and we can
contribute to a more peaceful future.
Within the fields of Gestalt therapy, psychoanalysis, and social psychology,
there are competing conceptions of aggression; the purpose of this essay is to
note these alternatives and to attempt to support the provocative perspective
introduced by the founding text of Gestalt therapy. One goal of this paper is
to update the relational view of aggression implicit in the original text but
inadequately explicated. Providing a sampling of topics in which I have been
personally involved over the years carries this aim forward. It does not intend
to encompass the multitude of other topics that can readily be related to
aggression.
In recent years two seminal thinkers have taken up this subject: Frank-M.
Staemmler (2009) in Gestalt therapy, and Jessica Benjamin (1999) in relational
psychoanalysis. Their inclusion of the relevant literature can serve as background
for this essay. Staemmler adopts the common sense, colloquial view of
aggression as always describing efforts that harm another who is the object
of that aggression. His scholarship is extensive and well worth examining, and
it contains an extended critique of the founders of Gestalt therapy. Benjamin,
who stays within the realm of psychoanalysis, presents the alternative view
in “Recognition and Destruction: An Outline of Intersubjectivity,” one that
is coherent with the original statement of the founders of Gestalt therapy.
Rather than recapitulate their arguments, I alert the reader to their function
as background to this essay, and I shall reference some relevant points from
them in my analysis. Both writers importantly go beyond the individualism
that is the underpinning of capitalist society.
I believe that aggression is much misunderstood in our common sense
usage, because it is used only in reference to wars between nations and
between citizens within nations. Yet, in my view, there is no human relation
without aggression since there is no relationship without persons energetically
presenting themselves to others. To bond with another, to converse with
another, to work alongside another, to love another, one must exert oneself
in reference to that other, and such exertion is the essence of aggression.
philip lichtenberg 147

Even the subduing of oneself in relation to another involves aggression; in this

matter, self-aggression. As we regulate ourselves in relationship, we are also
exerting ourselves in that relationship.
The various topics in this paper are not meant to be organized by any
systematic orientation other than that they are matters I have personally
attended to. A different author would choose a significantly different group.
They all have pertinence to the everydayness of life, and they aim to promote
a culture that is an alternative to what dominates at the present time.
After defining aggression and locating it within the conceptualization of
Gestalt therapy, I take up initiative as aggression, a major part of a capitalist
world; assertion as an alternative notion to aggression; criticism and self-
criticism as aggression; anger as aggression in both its divisive and bonding
forms; parenting as aggression, where each of us learns positive and negative
forms of aggression; what happens when one is an object of aggression in
both its bonding and destructive forms; and aggression against the self as an
undergirding of oppression.

Defining Aggression

I want to explore the matter of aggression in its inclusive and exclusive

aspects. In distinguishing such positive and negative aggression, I rely heavily
on Andras Angyal’s (1965) conception of “universal ambiguity”:

One outlook, while not indiscriminate optimism, reflects the

confidence that the “supplies” for one’s basic needs exist in the
world and that one is both adequate and worthy of obtaining these
supplies. The neurotic belief is that these conditions are not available
or that they can be made available by extremely complicated and
indirect methods. Thus, in one way of life, the two basic human
properties [autonomy and homonomy] function in an atmosphere
of hope, confidence, trust or faith. […] In the other, the propelling
forces [of autonomy and homonomy] are the same, but they function
in an atmosphere of diffidence, mistrust, and lack of faith. (p. 100)

Autonomy refers here to the trend toward self-expansion. In the trend to

homonomy, a person strives “to surrender himself [herself] and become an
organic part of something that he conceives as greater than himself” (p.
15). In Gestalt therapy, homonomy is considered to be healthy confluence
at final contact: a merging with the other, and a losing of self in this larger
unit. Angyal labels these two orientations as a healthy Gestalt and a neurotic
Gestalt, respectively, and the orientations give different meanings to the same
148 inclusive and exclusive aggression

subject; thus, aggression means one thing within an inclusive orientation and
something quite different in an exclusive orientation
In relation to Angyal’s “orientations,” I have developed a continuum of
what I call “dispositions” (Lichtenberg, 1988). At the ideal positive extreme
is a disposition labeled “confident expectation”; at the negative extreme
of this continuum is an “essential ambivalent anticipation.” No real person
has a disposition at either extreme because these are central tendencies,
and all persons are sometimes very confident, full of hope and faith, and
sometimes quite ambivalent, full of diffidence and mistrust, believing every
gain is accompanied by serious costs. Persons can be placed on this continuum
according to their typical way of being. Those nearest to a confident
expectation fit into Angyal’s healthy Gestalt when they are functioning with
confidence, whereas those nearer to the ambivalent anticipation fit into his
neurotic Gestalt when manifesting their ambivalence. I have located these
dispositions within a psychoanalytic tradition.
So, here are some definitions of aggression in the two orientations or
dispositions: an inclusive aggression based on confidence that one’s needs
will be met; and an exclusive aggression based on the anticipation that every
gain is burdened by costs. In either case, aggression is an energetic, forceful,
affirming, asserting, or protecting self in human relationships. Aggression is
the energy of action.
In its inclusive form, aggression appears in the process of engaging in a
connecting way and keeping engaged with an other or others who are the
object of one’s attention, and who may partner in one’s goal striving, or
be a perceived obstacle to one’s goals, or who are a felt challenge to one’s
integrity. Such aggression is attuned to the capacity of the other(s) to receive
it and to keep engaging with the aggressive person. In its exclusive form,
aggression appears as the energy in the processes that diminish or negate the
other or others in the relationship, or alternatively diminish or negate self in
the relationship. One may diminish others via domination, overpowering, or
escalating forcefulness. One may diminish self by withdrawing emotionally
or physically from the relationship, or by hiding or obscuring oneself from
the other. The ambiguity of aggression, thus, is that it can be bonding or
divisive, inclusive or exclusive, egalitarian or opposed to equality depending
upon whether it is embedded in a healthy or neurotic Gestalt.
With respect to aggression, a person must be seen always as simultaneously
dealing with self and other. In dominating an other, for example, a person
is also controlling self as part of the process, obscuring vulnerability or felt
weakness. In withdrawing, one is making one’s absence known to the other.
In meeting and bonding with an other one accounts to the other’s needs and
to one’s own needs.
philip lichtenberg 149

Aggression is an important component of the sequence of contacting

and withdrawing. It most properly appears during the contact phase of that
process. In its inclusive form, to be aggressive is energetically to promote a
distinct “I” and a distinct “You” in the relationship (Lichtenberg, 2000). A
person both defines self openly and clearly and urges the other to define self
openly and clearly when being in the service of communion at final contact.
In its exclusive form, aggression diminishes or negates both the “I” of the
other and the “I” of the self in the relationship, and thus promotes faulty
confluence. The excess energy used in dominating or negating others is
related to the degree of vulnerability, anxiety, helplessness arising within the
person that is more than usual for that person. It is best seen as an indication
of the person’s unaccepted feelings of vulnerability.

Initiative as Aggression

We do not ordinarily think of initiative as aggression, although it is so

announced in Perls et al. (1951, p. 342). In various dictionary definitions of
“initiative,” we do not see reference to aggression: “an introductory act or
step”; “readiness or ability in initiating action”; “the power or opportunity to
act or take charge before others do.” The term initiative derives from a Latin
word meaning “beginning.” When we think of aggression as the energy of
action, therefore, we can see initiative as a force bringing something into an
interaction in a social context that was not there before that act of beginning.
It is an energetic arousal.
Yet, what brings me to focus attention on initiative in my concern to modify
tolerance of violence and war? I do not think it is self-evident, though we
intuitively know that an entrepreneurial spirit is characteristic of modern
industrial societies, and that spirit relies on initiatives taken. So, too, wars of
aggression turn on how initiative is taken while blaming the object of that war
for requiring such action. I think of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and the United
States of America in the 1990s and later in respect of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Initiatives to go to war were taken after extensive projections upon others.
Oddly enough, what has brought me to this focus has been an interest in
responsibility, which I first studied in respect of applicants for public welfare
(Lichtenberg and Pollock, 1967; Lichtenberg, 1988).
In our research, my colleague and I learned that these applicants
for assistance were sometimes “irresponsible” and sometimes quite
“responsible,” depending upon how the authorities who worked with them
handled the initiatives which their position afforded them. In our work with
these caseworkers, we were able to transform disputatious and frustrating
encounters into relationships that placed both applicants and authorities into
150 inclusive and exclusive aggression

friendly, homonomous experiences. We saw that initiative could be inclusive

or exclusive, bonding or divisive, rewarding and effective or frustrating
and ineffective, depending upon how it was connected to answerability or
accountability to those affected by the initiative. We considered responsibility
to be two-pronged: responsibility for (bearing initiative, primacy) and
responsibility to (bearing answerability or accountability).
Some of these caseworkers utilized their power to level demands on the
applicants and required those applicants to be answerable for carrying out
these demands. For example, an applicant was told she must go to the District
Attorney and set in motion a process in which her absent husband would
be required to support her and her children. The caseworker was regularly
frustrated and angry when the applicant for her own reasons or excuses did
not carry out that requirement. The applicant was then criticized or turned
down for assistance and left frustrated and angry as well. The caseworker
then recorded the applicant as “irresponsible.” Or a mother was to take her
child to a dentist but reported she did not have the bus fare or the time, or
gave some other reason. She, too, was held blameworthy. The pattern was
repeated many times, as we were able to record.
Others of these caseworkers had learned to share their power and leaned
upon initiative developed by applicants. They balanced primacy (initiative) and
accountability and found their work with applicants pleasant and productive.
For example, one male caseworker dealt with a difficult male applicant who
had previously been told he must actively seek employment or he would not
receive assistance. The applicant provided many excuses for not doing so. This
new caseworker took a different approach. He noted that he was required by
law and by the agency to put the applicant in the way of employment, but
he would rely upon the applicant’s interest and creativity in how that effort
would proceed. He offered to drive the applicant to places that the applicant
chose, and to help in other ways he could. The applicant was visibly moved
by the offer, and together they set out to look for appropriate jobs. Uniting
primacy and answerability led to communion. The demand was still present,
but it was embedded in a more egalitarian and inclusive social relation.
For many years now persons lower in hierarchies in modern society have been
held accountable beyond the support given to them in doing the work they
are assigned to do. Teachers are made to be answerable for the performance
of their students on tests created by outsiders. Speed-up is common in factory
work, and performance demands are put on workers in service jobs beyond
their own decisions and creativity. These developments are seldom classified
as aggression, but they are experienced as aggression by those being held
to account. So, too, downsizing or closing of plants and organizations are
aggressive actions not listed under the heading of aggression. It should
philip lichtenberg 151

not be surprising that these actions promote rage, frustration, resignation,

and sometimes counter-aggression. That this type of action is a new normal
does not mean that such aggression of exclusion should be acceptable and
tolerated in a humane society. This pattern becomes doubly negative when
such social safety nets as unemployment insurance are cut back; or when it is
made ridiculous to talk of a minimum guaranteed income.
Business and politics in a capitalist society are built upon the separation of
initiative and answerability to the detriment of all citizens. We have a paucity
of warm and friendly encounters as a result, and I am not surprised by how
much depression and alcoholism, as well as other addictions, characterize
societies of today.

Assertion as Aggression

To “assert” is to state with assurance, confidence or force; to state strongly

or positively; to put oneself forward boldly and insistently. To be assertive
is also to be aggressive. In the 1970s, women’s consciousness-raising groups
encouraged women to be assertive and fostered assertiveness training groups.
More recently Frank-M. Staemmler (2009), in his critique of the approach
to aggression by the founders of Gestalt therapy, considered their view of
aggression as individualistic (pp. 27 ff.), centered on the side of the aggressor
and avoiding the other as the object of that aggression (p. 31); and he
adopted the colloquial view of aggression as always harming the other. He
noted Laura Perls’s two conceptions of aggression (the positive and negative
variants) as belonging to two different motivational systems, as specified by
the psychoanalyst Joseph Lichtenberg (pp. 38-39). He quoted Lichtenberg
as positing the “need for exploration and assertion” and “the need to react
aversively through antagonism or withdrawal (or both).” If I apply Angyal’s
(1965) idea of universal ambiguity in this context, the two motivational
systems can be located within the healthy and neurotic Gestalts. Thus,
Laura Perls’s view of aggression contains both aggression within a healthy
Gestalt and aggression within a neurotic Gestalt; whereas Staemmler’s and
Lichtenberg’s view of two motivational systems simply divides the issue into
aggression (neurotic Gestalt) and exploration-assertiveness (healthy Gestalt).
I think there is something right and something wrong with collapsing
aggression into assertion. On the recommended side, assertion does not have
the connotation of diminishing or negating the other, as aggression is often
(falsely) assumed to mean; that is, aggression is typically conceived as what
I have called exclusive aggression. Against this recommendation, assertion
refers only to the “I” of contacting and omits any attention to the other.
When I specify inclusive aggression, I am pointing to its function in contacting
152 inclusive and exclusive aggression

as leading toward a merging with the other in the relationship, as promoting

homonomy. To be aggressive is to support the other becoming a distinct
figure, as much as it suggests energetic presentation of self (Lichtenberg,
2000). Rather than diminishing the other, inclusive aggression promotes the
individuation and clarity of the other. Assertiveness could do this too, but
then it would have to be redefined as inclusive assertiveness and little would
be gained over the use of “aggression.”

Criticism and Self-Criticism as Aggression

I believe the same themes of inclusive aggression and exclusive aggression

clarify alternate meanings of criticism and self-criticism. When we ask a
person to look at something critically, we want that person to assess or judge
the strengths and limitations of that which is being scrutinized; we are not
inviting blanket rejection or wholesale acceptance. So, criticism can be a
means to connection, or a means to diminishing the other.
Historically, the down side of criticism and self-criticism was illustrated in
China during the Cultural Revolution there. What began as an effort to unite
academics and intellectuals with peasants and workers degenerated into
the domination of those academics and intellectuals by the “Red Guards,”
youths who came from the peasants and workers. Criticism was a put down
rather than becoming a move toward equality. People were coerced to be
self-critical. What Mao intended, I believe, was that persons in groups would
become direct and frank with one another inside the group and refrain from
criticism and gossip outside of the group (Mao, 1966, pp. 258-67). Criticism
and self-criticism were meant to contribute to group solidarity with members
as equals. The process degenerated into aggression as domination, because
the oppressed changed places with the oppressors and became the oppressors
themselves – an all too common process in revolutions.
When liberal arts education promotes critical thinking, it is attempting
to enable the ability to weigh the strong and weak components of complex
phenomena and to have students arrive at sound conclusions. Film and drama
critics are charged with a similar responsibility. We rely on their judgments
for a wise appraisal of a motion picture or a dramatic play. So, too, we expect
reviewers of books to provide a sound judgment about the book, though I
have personally experienced an unsound and condescending review, and it
rankles to this day.
We train participants in the training program of the Gestalt Therapy Institute
of Philadelphia to observe therapeutic work of fellow trainees and to give
commentary to the therapist that is insightful, geared to what the therapist
can assimilate, and challenging. We have come to call such commentary a
philip lichtenberg 153

“gift for growth.” It is not useful if it is not aggressive commentary, but it

is also not valuable if it diminishes or negates the therapist who is trying to
grow as a Gestalt therapist.
Editors help authors by their criticism as well as by encouragement of self-
criticism, as do teachers with their students.
In our time of exclusive aggressive talk radio shows, we see daily illustrations
of negative criticism, which leads even to death threats against those criticized.
Such programs have debased journalism, to the decline of our civilization.

Anger as Aggression

Anger is commonly viewed only as a negative emotion aimed at limiting

or diminishing the other. Staemmler (2009) devotes a lengthy part of his
book to describing anger in its negative form. He has no space for anger as
a means to reach communion in final contact. Yet, in Gestalt therapy we see
anger also in its positive light as containing passion with respect to the other
and, when well done, leading to union with the other: “[I]n general, anger
is a sympathetic passion; it unites persons because it is admixed with desire”
(Perls et al., 1951, p. 343).
Over the years I have had occasions in groups that I have facilitated when a
member has become angry with me, and I have had positive resolutions such as
Goodman suggests in the quotation above. In these encounters, I explore what
I have done that was angry-making, what the offended person experienced
internally, and what was going on inside me that brought me to do what I did.
Every time each of us has explored all of these matters thoroughly, we have
met in a friendly way. Indeed, some members of the group did not believe
that anger was present at all, since there was no outburst in the scene. From
these events, I wrote a little piece to share with colleagues which I called,
“The Incomplete ‘I’: An Impediment to Reaching Mutual Understanding and
Community.” Here, with a slight modification, is what I wrote:

I am angry with Gabrielle. I have the feeling of anger. Gabrielle has

done X, which arouses in me the feeling of anger.
There exists an I-Gabrielle, an I-You, in my experience, which seems
to fulfill the requirement for awareness of the experience of the
organism/environment field. In my awareness, I perceive in a complex
way what Gabrielle did to arouse my feeling of anger. Her action is
vivid for me as is my feeling of anger.
Yet, I now contend that beyond my feeling of anger is something
in me, a memory, an association, a bodily process that has contributed
to the arousal of my feeling with respect to Gabrielle. This is less vivid
154 inclusive and exclusive aggression

in my awareness than my perceptions of Gabrielle and her action.

This limit to my awareness is what I am calling an Incomplete “I.”
Example: Gabrielle says I am stealthily planning to do something
she does not like. She is accusing me of being underhanded. As a
result, I am angry with her. But why am I angry? There are many
possibilities, including my not being angry but interested in what she
is about. One reason I might be angry is that I believe she has attacked
my integrity. Anger is a common response when one’s integrity
is threatened, yet we have not established why there would be a
threat. We have transferred anger to the feeling of being threatened.
Perhaps Gabrielle has power over me, could hurt me, and I become
anxious about that possibility. But I have not had that anxiety in my
awareness vividly. So, my awareness is more distinct about Gabrielle
and her action than about what has been stimulated in me by that
action.
Perhaps Gabrielle has accused me in a public setting and I feel
exposed and somewhat shamed. But the feeling of shame, like that
of anxiety referred to above, is not vivid in my awareness.
Perhaps there is some truth in Gabrielle’s criticism. I do not want
to experience that truth, and the shame or other feeling connected
to my conniving, however innocent I consider myself to be. So, that is
dimmer in my awareness than my perception of Gabrielle.
There may be many other inner memories and associations stirred
up by Gabrielle’s action: for example, she reminds me of others who
have criticized me as my father was ready to do. The significant element
in the Incomplete “I” is how the perception of the other is balanced
by the interoceptions, which are registrations in awareness of one’s
interior. The feeling of anger is composed of both perceptions and
interoceptions, but the clarity of the interocepts is often lesser than
the clarity of the percepts. This is what I am calling an Incomplete “I.”
Put in a relational context, my expressing anger at Gabrielle is
quite different if 1) I emphasize only the perceptual origins of my
anger, her action; and 2) I give equal weight to my own contribution
to my angry feeling and to her contribution to that feeling. In the
first instance, when I emphasize her action and obscure my inner
part, I come across as blaming Gabrielle – and she will have to defend
herself, either by aggressing in response or withdrawing from me. My
anger can be seen as aimed at dominating Gabrielle. In the second
instance, when I give equal weight to what she has done to me and
what I have contributed to my feeling, I come across as being open to
her as well as to me – and she is more likely to want to meet me on
philip lichtenberg 155

this plane of equality.

We tend to obscure our own contribution because it makes us
vulnerable. We forget in such circumstances that we can be both
vulnerable and substantial in the same interaction. And, after all,
at bottom this is what life is: we are both vulnerable and will be
controlled by others, and we will ultimately die; and we are substantial
as we nonetheless go about living. A more complete “I” is thus life
affirming.

Parenting as Aggression

Parenting children can be an egalitarian endeavor or an authoritarian

enterprise, and whether it is egalitarian or authoritarian depends heavily
upon whether the aggression is of an inclusive or an exclusive nature. The
interplay of vulnerability and aggression assumes significance in parenting
activities because infants and children represent the fullness of vulnerability
in their innocence and receptivity; parents and other caretakers wield the
most obvious aggression in the negotiations that ensue between the smaller
and larger one.
In a psychoanalytic study that my colleagues and I carried out in a child
psychiatry clinic in the 1950s, we did an analysis of parent-child relationships
over many domains, ranging from feeding patterns, weaning and toilet
training to friendships, schooling, household chores, religious indoctrinations
to independence strivings (Lichtenberg, Kohrman, and Macgregor, 1960).
We were interested in how parents and children came to mutually inclusive
divisions of satisfactions; we were studying how they “met” each other in daily
life. We believed that infants and children were moved by their own needs;
they were originally oriented to cooperating with others and were sensitive
to others, such that they monitored when others were available to them or
too anxious to meet them, and so forth. We also believed that caretakers
had to find and deal positively with the needs of the infant and child as the
child expressed these needs, but that in doing so they had also to attend to
and take care of their own desires. This was a central lesson we derived from
psychoanalysis and from progressive education. We defined permissiveness
such that parents attended to their own desires, while encouraging their
children to find and express their needs and preferences.
Central to our assessment was how early in the child’s acting upon his or her
needs the parent saw conflict with their own desires and acted to curtail the
child. Conversely, as would be expected in mutual adaptation, we analyzed
how parents imposed their desires upon their children, or accommodated
themselves to their children. For example, we looked at whether the parents
156 inclusive and exclusive aggression

allowed the children to participate and regulate their own weaning from
the breast or the bottle; how children leaned upon developments within
their bodies to toilet train themselves while watching their parents use the
bathroom; how children were free to deal with playmates; how the little ones
expressed interest in morals; how they chose to nurture themselves as well as
others; how they dealt with cleanliness; and how they became independent.
We developed a scale that would rate early and late interventions, took a
central tendency to record how mutually inclusive children and their parents
were in their ongoing daily lives, and correlated that tendency with family
motivation for treatment in our clinic.
The scale we used was called “Stage of Earliest Application of Power.” We
rated the place at which parents first conceived that a child’s need conflicted
with their own need. It ranged from parents inducing needs in children (as in
over-protecting parents) to seeing conflict only after the child had explored
alternative ways of meeting his or her needs and settled upon one behavior
that challenged the parent’s needs. We were able from these ratings to see
the constellations of problems shown by the children, not only by the central
tendency of inclusiveness or exclusiveness over many areas, but also by which
domain showed early intrusions by the parents and which were more mutual
and led to meetings of parent and child.
For us, child-rearing was aimed at promoting a general confidence in the
child, such that the child would have the faith that Goodman suggested (Perls
et al., 1951, p. 415); the healthy Gestalt that Angyal (1965) referred to; and
the confident expectation that I derived (Lichtenberg, 1988). To promote
a child’s growth was less to foster particular behaviors than to support the
child’s creativity and sense of self. Where behaviorists suggested that parents
reward some behaviors to promote them, we focused on mutual adaptation
of parents and child and the meetings that were created.
Parents use their influence in relation to their children, and this can be
inclusive aggression or exclusive aggression. Parenting when viewed in the
light of aggression is not only dominating a child, using anger as a control,
spanking a wayward boy, or reacting to the temper tantrum of a frustrated
little girl. It is using influence to find an infant’s need when the infant is
mysteriously crying; it is providing situations in which the child uses creativity;
it is dealing with one’s own needs in ways that a child can understand and come
to terms with. Because aggression has long been narrowed to mean exclusive
aggression, we have handicapped ourselves from seeing the relevance and
significance of aggression in child-rearing. When we see inclusive aggression
as the energetic part of actions that lead to moments of communion between
parents and children, we have a better view of democratic, progressive child-
rearing. We can then normalize the anger that every parent and every child
philip lichtenberg 157

experience in relationships, since anger indicates influence gone astray and

helplessness beginning to appear.
Benjamin (1999) has suggested that intersubjectivity develops in the child
through mutual influence of mother and child. Drawing on the work of
Winnicott, Stern and Beebe, and her own thinking about the need of both
child and mother for recognition, Benjamin posed that conflict between
mother and child as well as support is vital to healthy development:

How she responds to her child’s and her own aggression depends on
her ability to mitigate such fantasies [of omnipotence] with a sense
of real agency and separate selfhood, on her confidence in her child’s
ability to survive conflict, loss, imperfection. The mother has to be
able to both set clear boundaries for her child and recognize the
child’s will, to both insist on her own independence and respect that
of the child – in short to balance assertion and recognition. If she
cannot do this, the omnipotence continues. (p. 191)

Benjamin stated further:

As Beebe and Lachmann […] have proposed, one of the main

principles of the early dyad is that relatedness is characterized not
by continuous harmony but by continuous disruption and repair.
[…] A relational psychoanalysis should leave room for the messy
intrapsychic side of creativity and aggression; it is the contribution of
the intersubjective view that may give these elements a more hopeful
cast, showing destruction to be the “other” of recognition. (p. 199)

Parent-child relations are the training ground for learning to be aggressive;

too often in the past only exclusive aggression has been brought to the fore,
which is another reason why war and violence are so readily accepted.

On Being the Object of Aggression

When a person is the recipient of aggression coming from another, that

person experiences the aggression quite differently if the aggression is of the
inclusive or exclusive character; and the recipient manages the aggression
differently if that person brings a healthy or a neurotic Gestalt to the
relationship. In all instances of aggression, the recipient takes in what is
happening to herself or to himself; the person introjects the aggression. What
happens inside the person after this internalizing, and how the person acts
subsequently in the relationship, depends upon how the recipient processes
158 inclusive and exclusive aggression

what has been taken in from the aggressive other.

The simplest case exists when the aggression is an inclusive one on the part
of the aggressor, and the object of that aggression responds from a healthy
Gestalt. Both parties to the relationship are promoting the autonomy of the
other as well as their own agency, and the meeting or homonomy is made
most probable. That is the ideal situation, and everyone comes away from the
encounter feeling enhanced as part of a unit larger than self, as a member of
a new community.
Matters become more complicated if the recipient brings a neurotic
Gestalt to what is intended as an inclusive aggression. In this situation, the
recipient tends to act as if the aggression is of an exclusive rather than an
inclusive nature. The aggressor must now increase efforts at reassuring the
other that a meeting of equals is intended rather than any domination in the
relationship. In effect, the aggressor needs to assist the recipient in processing
the aggression.
When the aggression is exclusive, the best that the recipient can do is to
bring his or her healthy Gestalt into the relationship; that is, the person who
is an object of an exclusive aggression will internalize the intensity of the
aggression meant for dominating that person, and also the unacknowledged
and unaccepted vulnerability on the part of the aggressor that is projected to
avoid the direct experience of that felt weakness by the aggressor. Exclusive
aggression tends to produce vulnerability in the object of the aggression,
which must be managed as well as the aggression itself. I have described this
process in a chapter detailing how a therapist best meets a client who is being
oppressive in the therapy (Lichtenberg, 2004). The challenge is to experience
fully the impact of the aggressor’s actions; to discriminate what is one’s
own contribution to the felt aggression and helplessness, and what is being
projected by the aggressor. Then the therapist introduces vulnerability and
assertion into the relation without ceding power to the client. The therapist
is being vulnerable and aggressive in the context of a search for a meeting
with the client.
The most complex and disruptive transaction unfolds when the recipient of
exclusive aggressive actions processes the aggression and acts in the relation
from a neurotic Gestalt. This may entail identification with the aggressor
(self-conquest) as the recipient submits to the aggressor; or it may involve
a counter-aggression that is ineffective because it contains the recipient’s
own unaccepted but active vulnerability. Herein is the basis for collusion of
oppressor and oppressed (Lichtenberg, 1990/1994/2002). Managing one’s
felt vulnerability as well as the internalized aggression is the challenge for a
person who is the object of an exclusive aggression.
philip lichtenberg 159

Aggression Against the Self

In Gestalt therapy we have tended to call aggression directed inwardly

against the self “Self-Conquest” (Perls et al., 1951, pp. 353 ff.) This approach
limits such aggression to being only exclusive aggression and omits the
possibility of inclusive aggression, that self-directed aggression which has
been delineated earlier as productive self-criticism. We must remember that
all energetic effort is relational as well as self-organizing, which guides us
to look at how the other in the relationship experiences this self-directed
aggression. Unless we do this, we fall into an individualistic rather than a
relational psychology.
With recent attention to mirror neurons, we have access to the impact on
others when one is directing aggression against the self. On the one hand,
being self-critical socially, while communicating personal acceptance of oneself
and confidence in the presence of that criticism, promotes contacting on the
way to communion. It represents bringing one’s fullness and complexity into
the relationship. It presumes equality in the relationship. With the openness
of self-criticism, others are not led to projecting upon the person when they
see more of him or of her. One can be self-critical while fostering increased
contact with another in the relationship.
On the other hand, self-conquest as internally-directed exclusive aggression
may support inequality in a social relation, and it may do so importantly if the
inequality already exists in that relationship; that is, if one party is superior and
the other subordinate. In the most well-known version seen in identification
with the aggressor (Lichtenberg, 1990, pp. 9 ff.), the self-directed exclusive
aggression aims to separate and protect the subordinate from the aggressive
superior. This self-conquest causes the person to hide his or her reactive
aggression from the superior and to manage it privately. This strategy of
hidden triumph over the self by the subordinate allows the aggressor to
project upon the subordinate according to his or her own predisposition, and
colors the relationship in accord with the tendencies of the superior. In this
way, the subordinate contributes to his or her inferiority in the relationship.
Sooner or later, the subordinate can no longer contain the projection, and his
or her own aggression surfaces.
Alternately, the superior in the relationship may develop or increase
superiority by self-control of his or her exclusive aggression. When my father
clenched his teeth to contain his anger with me, I became frightened and I
shrank. When the president of our college displayed her displeasure by self-
control, we faculty members felt intimidated. Some were later outspokenly
exclusively aggressive when they were leaving the college or were retiring.
In short, aggression against the self has complex ramifications when seen
160 inclusive and exclusive aggression

in a relational frame; it is not innocent in respect of how others are affected

in its presence.

Conclusion

This study in aggression is, at the same time, an exploration of vulnerability

in the presence of aggression. As we change the common sense view of
aggression so that we see it in its inclusive as well as its exclusive form, we must
also change the everyday meaning of being open about one’s vulnerability.
Here, again, Angyal’s (1965) notion of universal ambiguity is relevant. To
be vulnerable when acting within a neurotic Gestalt is to be indirect, self-
abasing, manipulative, and essentially pathetic – hoping to be taken care of
– or to dominate the other in reaction as we often see in fighting couples.
Alternatively, to be vulnerable within a healthy Gestalt is to acknowledge
one’s weakness while also accepting one’s strength and influence in the
situation of dealing with an aggressive other. Being vulnerable when acting
within a healthy Gestalt means a person retains his or her sense of being an
agent in the relationship.
War and violence are obvious instances of exclusive aggression. They
are efforts to dominate an enemy, to make the enemy vulnerable. Wars in
the last one hundred years have shown us that such efforts at domination
invariably fail in the long run. Sooner or later, the enemy recovers its sense
of being an influence in the relationship and gives up absorbing projections.
Nazi Germany learned this lesson, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq,
and Afghanistan have been teaching the same lesson to the United States
of America, as Afghanistan taught the Russians and the British before them.
There is no end to the “war on terror.”
We must reframe war so that in our moments of vulnerability – political,
economic, and social – we can find inclusive aggression rather than the urge
to dominate assigned others. The failures of the “war on drugs,” being
tough on crime, putting the mentally ill in prisons rather than in therapeutic
communities, should have taught us the inadequacies of exclusive aggression.
As capitalism continues its historical decline, leaving masses of people poor and
uncared for, we will need to learn the lessons of productive and unproductive
aggression if humankind is to survive.

Philip Lichtenberg, Ph.D.

[email protected]
philip lichtenberg 161

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