Abstract
Our contribution focuses on the psychodynamic view on aggression. It mentions primary psychoanalytic conceptualizations of aggression stemming principally from Freud's physiological determinism, in which aggression is deemed to be natural behavioral manifestation of Thanatos.
Thanatos, as well as Eros, is part of human physiological disposition. From the point of view of contemporary depth psychology, Freud's conceptualization of aggression associated with the definition of neurotic defense mechanisms seems to have postulated basic principles of modern psychodynamic understanding of personality construct.
According to O.F. Kernberg et al. (Yeomans, Clarkin & Kernberg, 2015), personality structure can be conceived as a mutually intertwinned set of dimensions in which the degree and quality of aggressive symptoms, besides others, present essential determinanty in the assessment of the severity of personality psychopathology.
So far, low level of identity consolidation, predominance of primitive defense mechanisms and instable reality testing have been used to help differentiate between normal/neurotic, borderline and psychotic personality organization; however, more profound analysis of psychodynamic aspects of aggression allows to distinguish more subtle phenomena within the borderline organization range that can be applied mainly in differential diagnostics of individual personality disorders.