Page 281 - The Social Animal

Human Aggression 263

nuclear warheads floating around to destroy the world’s population
many times over, I feel justified in questioning the current survival
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value of this behavior. Anthropologist Loren Eiseley paid tribute to
our ancient ancestors but warned against imitating them when he
wrote: “The need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than
those who won for us against the ice, the tiger, and the bear.”

Catharsis—Does It Work? There is another sense in which it
has been argued that aggressive behavior can serve a useful and per-
haps a necessary function. I refer here to the psychoanalytic concept
of catharsis—the release of energy. Specifically, as mentioned earlier,
Sigmund Freud believed that unless people were allowed to express
themselves aggressively, the aggressive energy would be dammed up,
pressure would build, and the energy would seek an outlet, either ex-
ploding into acts of violence or manifesting itself as symptoms of
mental illness. In our own country, the distinguished psychiatrist
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William Menninger has asserted that “competitive games provide
an unusually satisfactory outlet for the instinctive aggressive drive.”
This belief has become part of our cultural mythology. For ex-
ample, in the 1999 movie Analyze This, a psychiatrist (played by Billy
Crystal) is forced into a therapeutic relationship with a Mafia boss
and murderer played by Robert De Niro. The De Niro character is
suffering from hypertension brought on by excessive anger and anx-
iety. During one of their therapy sessions, the Billy Crystal charac-
ter says, “You know what I do when I’m angry? I hit a pillow. Try
that.” In the mind of the gangster, “hit” means “kill.” So De Niro
promptly whips out his gun, and fires several bullets into a pillow.
Billy Crystal gulps, forces a smile, and says, “Feel better?” “Yeah, I
do!” says De Niro.
Charming? Yes. Accurate? Nope. There is a plethora of evidence
indicating that the Billy Crystal solution simply does not work. In
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one experiment, Brad Bushman made his participants angry by
having his accomplice (a fellow student) insult them. Immediately
afterward, the participants were assigned to one of three experimen-
tal conditions: In one condition, they were allowed to spend a few
minutes slugging away at a punching bag while being encouraged to
think about the student who had made them angry. In a second con-
dition, the students hitting the punching bag were encouraged to
think of this activity as physical exercise. In the third condition, the