✍ Scribed by Alan R. Felthous
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Impulsive aggression can amount to criminal behavior, or, for that matter, tortious conduct with remedies in the civil law. In criminal law the impulsivity of an aggressive act has been used to negate or diminish criminal culpability. Consider for example the ``irresistible impulse'' test for insanity (Slovenko, 1995). A countervailing trend would not exculpate a defendant whose only defense is diminished selfcontrol. Anecdotally, impulsive aggression has been used to spare those convicted of a capital oense from the death penalty. To the extent that impulsivity is due to a disorder of dyscontrol, it is argued that the oender was incapable of self-restraint. Conversely, the history of recurrently impulsive aggression can support imposition of the death penalty, because continued violent aggression, based on the oender's history, is said to be predictable and relatively unamenable to rehabilitation programs. These are a few of the paradoxes in how the law applies this concept of impulsive aggression.
Violence and aggression are not uncommon themes in the behavioral science literature (Volavka, 1995). Impulsivity, too, has been investigated and discussed (Webster & Jackson, 1997). In recent years increasing scienti®c attention has been given to the phenomenon of impulsive aggression. Scienti®c developments that improve understanding of impulsive aggression warrant the attention of those who study the broad realm of behavior and the law.
Without pre-stating contributing authors' scholarly de®nitional formulations of impulsive aggression, a few preliminary comments should be helpful. The term impulsive aggression can refer to a speci®c act; a mental, emotional, or behavioral state; or an ongoing trait unrelated to mental illness, but impulsively aggressive acts can, of course, be the result of various mental disorders as well. In some situations the ability to act quickly and aggressively may be adaptive. Contributing authors were not limited with regard to the nature of impulsive aggression they addressed. In this issue, as in the literature in general, the reader will recognize that some authors articulate a very speci®c and limited meaning of the term ``impulsive aggression'' whereas others use the concept rather broadly. Although the pursuit of terminology that transcends disciplines, permits eective communication, and allows integrated or replicated research is to be welcomed; for now, some conceptual divergence is the state of aairs.
Impulsive aggression has multiple dimensions: neurophysiological, neuroendocrine, psychological, neuroanatomical, psychopharmacological, psychosocial, to name several. This issue is a selection of literature reviews and original research reports that collectively re¯ect the multidimensionality of impulsive aggression. Not only does impulsive aggression lend itself to a multidisciplinary, multitheoretical approach, but some of the most signi®cant advances in our knowledge about impulsive aggression can be expected from research that integrates various methodologies and disciplinary orientations. Barratt and Slaughter (pp. 285±302) have de®ned impulsive aggression for clinical and investigative approaches and have
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