Book Reviews: Narcisse en Quête de Soi (Narcissus in Quest of Himself).
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Abstract
timately, the loving component of the violence fondaineniale) as the organizing factor in personality development. The cases Bergeret presents to illustrate his points derive from his clinical work with depressive, suicidal, and phobic patients. Their symptoms and character structure are presented as exemplifying the vicissitudes and contortions of the hypothesized violence fondamentale. I am more impressed by the points Bergeret makes about the utility of a valenceneutral concept like violence fondumenfale (as a wellspring of both sexual and aggressive drives as these unfold at later stages); it remains unclear whether the case material really fortifies these points. It might be more convincing, v k h i s the existence of innate tendencies, to present material stemming from work with aggressive or other strongly “driven” persons who were reared in relatively nurturing and nonhostile families. Bergeret’s concept of a violeiice fondamentale, because it is a metaphor for .the primordial life force before differentiation into sexual, aggressive, and other drives, helps us get around some of the vexatious “either-or” questions concerning etiology of various clinical states: do certain complexes (in the adult) stem “either” from overabundant innate aggression’ “or” from a surplus of sexual drive? Questions so phrased are usually unanswerable, at least until such time as we can determine whether certain neurotransmitters subserve particular drives and whether some persons are born with excess activity in one of these transmitter systems. Until then, it may be less confusing simply to speak, as Bergeret does, of an innate vital force-where it is understood that this force (a) could be stronger in some persons than in others, (b) could later on manifest itself predominantly as aggression because of either biological or environmental factors, and (c) could remain poorly differentiated in a number of pathological states where, for example, sex and aggression are commingled and overly intense (promiscuity, jealousy).