O Eu e a agressividade na primeira dualidade pulsional freudiana

This article approaches the hypotheses about aggressive conflicts in their relations to the agencies constituting the ego in the context of Freud’s theory of the first instinctual dualism. These hypotheses gain greater consistency with the 1914 introduction of the concept of narcissism and the ideas presented in Instincts and their vicissitudes. Since then, aggressiveness became an increasingly frequent, complex, and encompassing subject in Freud’s explanation of mental phenomena. This development made it possible for Freud to infer the existence of two different agencies responsible for the aggressiveness direct towards the ego: the ego-ideal and the critical part of the ego itself. Certainincoherence in Freud’s attempts to explain aggressive conflicts in these agencies is discussed and it is pointed out that these incoherences allow a double interpretation of the causes of suicide and the functions performed by the critical part of the ego.