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The [[word ]] [[violence ]] derives from an Indo-European root that refers to [[life]]. The [[natural ]] [[instinct ]] of violence is thus not a destructive instinct, much less a [[death ]] instinct, but a natural life and survival instinct that corresponds to the instinct of [[self]]-preservation in Sigmund [[Freud]]'s first [[theory ]] of the [[instincts]].

It involves what Freud saw as a sort of natural "[[imaginary ]] [[cruelty]]" in 1897 and described in "[[Instincts and Their Vicissitudes]]" (1915c) as [[being ]] common to [[humans ]] and animals. This instinct's [[goal ]] is above all to protect life and the [[narcissistic ]] integrity of the [[subject]]. This holds regardless of the potential effects caused secondarily to an [[object ]] that as yet has only a narcissistic status in the subject's [[imagination]]. [[Instinctual ]] violence has [[nothing ]] to do with [[aggressiveness]], [[sadism]], or [[hatred]], whose [[libidinal ]] components Freud showed to be aimed at an object that had otherwise attained an [[oedipal ]] [[genital ]] status.

In [[Three ]] Essays on the Theory of [[Sexuality ]] (1905), Freud very clearly showed that this brutal instinct can attract to itself a part of the [[sexual ]] instincts, producing [[aggressive ]] components. In 1915 he attributed a narcissistic and [[phallic ]] [[character ]] to violent dynamism and advanced the hypothesis of a logically necessary [[anaclisis ]] of the sexual instincts on the brutal self-preservation instincts, so as to reinforce the [[energy ]] of the sexual instincts in the direction of [[love ]] and [[creativity]].

The [[role ]] of the instinct of violence was gradually specified in European and American [[psychoanalytic ]] studies that since 1960 have focused on a veritable [[metapsychology ]] of [[narcissism]]. In La Violence fondamentale (Fundamental violence; 1984) Jean Bergeret, based on such studies and Freud's first hypotheses, proposed an attempted [[synthesis]], forming a theory of instinctual violence. He gave special emphasis to the difficulties Freud encountered in trying to account for the [[stage ]] of [[primitive ]] violence within the [[totality ]] of the [[Oedipus ]] [[myth]]. The first [[acts ]] of the drama (the oracle of Apollo and the episode of Mount Cithaeron in [[particular]]) bear [[witness ]] to [[human ]] beings' deep intuitive [[awareness ]] of their fundamental instinct of brutality in the service of self-preservation.

Freud was never [[satisfied ]] with his successive theories [[about ]] the instincts. Rather, he decided to focus on the [[synchronic ]] aspect of a [[conflict ]] arising between tendencies within the same psychogenetic generation. His theory of instinctual anaclisis, however, would have enabled him to conceptualize a [[diachronic ]] conflict pitting the violent [[pregenital ]] tendencies against the sexual tendencies, with all the possible configurations linked to fusion, defusion, and the different modes of articulation of these two fundamental groups of instincts. His [[choice ]] of a synchronic [[model ]] of conflict prevented Freud from better integrating into his [[psychodynamic ]] and [[economic ]] conception this brutal instinct of violence and [[defense]], which he had nevertheless clearly described.

See also: Aggressiveness/aggression; Catastrophic [[change]]; Combined parent [[figure]]; Criminology and [[psychoanalysis]]; Cruelty; [[Envy ]] and Gratitude; [[Fort-Da]]; [[Mastery]], instinct for; Phobias in [[children]]; [[Primal ]] [[scene]]; Sadism; Stammering; [[Transgression]].[[Bibliography]]