Love and Hate
- Author:
Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt
Methuen, ?2.50
Professor Eibl-Eibesfeldt is a pupil of Konrad Lorenz, the father of ethology, and is director of the section concerned with human ethology at the Max Planck Institute for comparative physiology. This book is a translation from German and it follows an established tradition of Lorenz, Desmond Morris and others who are relating the human to animal behaviour as studied in various species of fishes, birds and mammals.
Clearly behind such conceptualisation lies the issue of human evolution and here the jump from animal to human behaviour is one laden with dangerous traps on which only the experts are fit to comment.
The author, of course, takes much for granted in bridging this human/ animal gap and pursues a popular and important theme?the roots of aggression in the higher species and its implications for man. He starts by attacking the environmental theory that all aggression is definitely not innate but the product of the environmental forcesisuch as frustration. The dream of all optimists that we can eliminate aggression by simply improving human conditions is unacceptable to the thesis which sees aggression as an innate force in all species, including man.
He then examines how animals and man have developed techniques to take the sting out of aggression. For this he utilises almost exclusively the formation of one-to-one bonds. The mating bond is the fundamental one but the parent-child relationship is seen to be of even greater importance. It is the motherchild relationship that establishes all the characteristics of closeness, smiling, comforting, food-giving, nurturing which continue throughout adult life as the signs of contact, friendship, appeasement and cohesion.
Thus the small group community establishes close bonds within itself which prevail against intra-group aggression. People within the group smile, greet, feed each other, all of which reduces tension. The group, however, closes its ranks against outsiders who threaten its territory, food and female members. But in former periods peace could be reached once again through the visible and personal contact of adjacent groups, if not always, at most sometimes.
The breakdown of the intimate group, the anonymity of communities, the impersonality of group membership and the powerful destructive weapons have removed many of these innate tendencies towards peace and love.
Professor Eibl-Eibesfeldt nevertheless believes that man’s inherent biological tendencies towards bonding will prevail and he remains optimistic about the future. Certainly all his readers would wish to agree with him fully. But there are reservations in that man’s uniqueness in complexity tends to outstrip his biological defence mechanisms.
Although the bonds of attachment formed between mother and child are of permanent importance in maintaining loving relationships with others, man needs to develop a will to care and to love which goes far beyond his biological infrastructure requiring every ounce of his reason and ultimately a force outside himself which has variously been called God.
Oominian
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