Gestalt Ottawa

I was reading an article about aggression and I came across
with subject of appetitive aggress. I started looking and
searching for this subject. This short article is sum of my
understanding of subject matter of aggression and
appetitive aggression.

Aggression is instinct feeling of animals and humans.
The only differences between animal and human aggression
is displayed behaviour by these two living being.

Human used aggression for living (hunting) then
become part of human characters. Aggressive behaviour of
human has progressed and became as strategy for imposing
violence against other human. Some believe that:
“The legacy of the development of hunting behavior is proposed
to be an appetitive reward-driven mechanism that responds to
hunting-related cues such as blood and cries of the prey animal.
This in turn has become adapted, through exposure to
cruelty-related cues, to the suffering of human Even though
this phenomenon has been widely described for forms collective
violence, no empirical data on its structure, function,
phenomenology, and neurobiological mechanisms have
thus far been undertaken.”

Appetitive aggression is viewed as the act of violence
and harm to a victim for the experiencing violence and related
enjoyment and pleasure of having control.

Basically appetitive aggression is goal oriented and planned
aggression towards others.

Definition of violence could be interpreted very broadly
such as emotional, physical, financial, sexual and cultural and
lists go on yet, there is not any internationally recognized
version of defining aggression that I know of it.

Most possibly lack of such international definition is causing
by powerful countries in the world which they are involved in
constant act of war against other countries!

Aggression defined as the influential (active/appetitive/destructive)
and the reactive (hostile/affective/defensive/retaliatory) in contrast.

It is important to understand that there is distinction between aggression
and appetitive aggression. However such distinction until now has
no tool for assessment as far I know.

I believe this comes down on differences of individual thought and
behaviour along with society’s systematic acceptance and behaviour
in this regard.

Of course there is some instrument for the assessment of aggressive
behaviour of individual in which mentioned items, some around 12 or
29 items are just for self-inventory and could use for aggression and hostility.

A mentioned item has been proven to be useful in guiding psychological
research and has served to develop prevention and treatment programs
for abnormal aggressiveness behaviour.

Now the question will remain that what is normal aggressive behaviour?
Or what is abnormal aggressive behaviour?

Aggression In war zone and affected places as well as international violence
are categorized by amount and degree of violence.

Violence has own cycle of experience in which gets broader as result of fear
and aggressive environment that purposefully facilitate for development of
such behaviour in war zone.

In war zone conditions that lead to an outbreak of mass violence, genocide,
rape and other controlling methods that shape the attacker behavior throughout
politics, cultures and most recently extremists using violent perspective of religion
as a control mechanism by imposing mass violence, genocide and rape of the ordinary people.

In conclusion measuring appetitive aggression is taking place within aggressive behaviour
scale based on theory rather than technicality and experience.
More so value base of such assessment scale is based on former conflict zone
in region not present one and that is how accuracy of such assessment
will remain questionable.

Razi Ghaemmagham Farahani

Gestalt Ottawa and Clinical Hypnosis
Art Therapist