“Are we going to dinner with mine?”, “Would you do extraordinary?”.
“I would prefer no!”
This could be the typical phrase of one aggressive passive personality as highlighted by Fea (2023) citing the response of the protagonist of the novel of Melville Bartbly write it. An apparently harmless response that however sends an entire law firm to the air in the aforementioned novel. How many times do we use liabilities in our relationships? When it comes to an aggressive passive attitude, when a defense mechanism, when a real disorder? What are the differences in nuance and what are the characteristics of an aggressive passive personality? We will try to paint a fresco of meaning, causes, behaviors and management strategies of this type of personality.
Aggressive passive: meaning and characteristics
In an article that appeared on International in 2024, the psychoanalyst Cohen defines in this way thepassive aggression:
“It is the indirect and often insidious way with which we express antagonism or disobedience by reserving the right to deny our intentions in a credible way”.
In his work Cohen highlights how the inclusion of aggressive strokes in a actual personality disorder has been debated since the first edition of the DSM (the diagnosis and statistical manual of psychiatric disorders) dating back to 1952. The list of “symptoms” was borrowed from the considerations of Colonel Menininger, a military psychiatrist, who wondered about some attitudes of elusive in place by the soldiers. However, it was a particular context like that of a battlefield. Extrapolated from that frame and brought to relational contexts such as in diagnostic ones (for example in reference to adolescence) these traits are associated with misunderstanding in the personality. Until the third edition of the DSM (1980) the aggressive passive disorder was diagnosed in the presence of the following characteristics:
- Stubbornness;
- Inefficiency;
- Tendency to procrastinate;
- Leisure;
- Forgetfulness.
Today the diagnosis is no longer present and Cohen suggests us to consider these traits as potentially inherent in each of us and in our difficulty in recognizing aggressive and angry tendencies in our way of relating to us. To a different extent, therefore it is characteristics that each of us can express with attitudes that contemplate irony, sarcasm, silence, courtesy as tools of socially accepted expression of our disappointment.
Causes of aggressive passive attitude
The causes of aggressive passive attitude can concern educational models experienced in childhood and adolescence, but also aspects of a cultural and social nature.
The psychological causes can be the following:
- Educational-family controlling environment which limits the expression of emotions such as anger or conflict by threatening consequences and punishments;
- Imitation of aggressive passive attitudes expressed by the parents;
- Difficulty in communicating conflicting aspects and emotions connected;
From a moral and social point of view they can instead intervene:
- Value, cultural or religious models that negatively paint anger and conflict;
- Valorial, cultural or religious models that prefer the expression of dissent through kindness, courtesy.
In some cases, aggressive passive behavior can be inserted within a wider personality organization. For example, aggressive passive attitudes or passive behaviors may be present in people who have substances abuse disorders (Villani & Lorusso, 2004) or with a narcissistic personality disorder.
Aggressive passive in relationships
How the aggressive passive behavior in love?
- Use of punitive silence;
- Tendency to move the fault on the partner avoiding taking responsibility;
- Tendency to procrastination;
- Tendency to exercise a control by avoiding the use of open conflict;
- Non -effective communication;
- Use of sarcasm, irony;
- Tendency to escape comparison pretending not to understand.
The person with aggressive passive attitude can resort to the following strategies to end a relationship:
- Use of excuses to avoid open contrast and own responsibility;
- Provocative or irritating behavior in an attempt to maintain control over the situation:
- Tendency to avoidance attitudes that push the partner to make the first move;
- Use of vague communication, indirect through hints.
The report, bringing the theme of the fear of addiction to the stage (Cohen, 2024), can become a particularly probable field of experience for a person with an aggressive passive attitude. Contrasts, conflict, emotionality are in fact on the agenda in the relational panorama and can complicate the sentimental experience of a person with this type of attitude.
Can a passive-aggressive fall in love?
The person with a passive-aggressive attitude can experience feelings of love and attachment, but tends to live the relationship in an ambivalent way. The difficulty in directing emotions and needs directly, combined with the fear of conflict and dependence, can hinder the construction of an authentic bond. The fear of being vulnerable can lead to implementing closing behaviors, emotional detachment, avoidance or sabotage of the relationship. Even when involved, the passive-aggressive person can live intimacy as a threat, making it difficult for the partner to understand the real emotional experiences.
Aggressive passive behavior at work
In the novel by Melville, Bartleby Lo Scorano (1853), the protagonist assumed as a copyist in a law firm responds to the request to examine a document with a courteous “I would prefer not to”. At this point he crosses his arms and refuses to abandon the day and night office. The “painfully respectable” writing “causes the ruin of the law firm are immobile and silent.
Literature therefore offers us an example of the aggressive passive attitude at work. The opposition does not materialize in platitally aggressive or conflicting actions that could justify sanctions. Rather manifests itself in a silent opposition, almost inappunable in its apparent courtesy. Also in this case, attitudes related to a non -optimal communication, to silence, to procrastination, to the absence of assumption of responsibility, sarcasm, obstructionism and avoidance of the comparison represent the identikit of aggressive passive behavior.
How to deal with aggressive passive personality?
In his article on International, Cohen (2024) reports a clinical cartoon taken from one of his session with a patient. In this way it highlights how often to aggressive passive behavior responds in a symmetrical way in a sort of race to those who feel more in the right to pass as a defenseless victim. Aggressiveness is a tool to react to the weakness and impotence of feeling defenseless. The passive form allows you to escape this feeling of dependence and inferiority by avoiding passing through forms of behavior not socially accepted. Thus they create ballets between unsigned antagonists who try to win the primacy of victim making the other feel guilty.
The communication without hostility, capable of allowing the expression of strong and complex content without transcending in aggression, presupposes relational environments without judgment, spaces in which it is possible to reason openly on what can be heard trying to recognize the feeling of others, any projective dynamics with which we can happen to arm the gaze of others (our way of seeing things goes back as if it were the expression of the point of view). A space of this type can be found within a psychotherapy path. It is often not easy to build it in the workplace, familiar or the couple relationship. When the communication methods are clearly dysfunctional, when generating discomfort in the relationship due to forms of control exercised through punitive silences and obstructions, it may be useful to contact a professional to face causes, origin and strategies for the transformation of these behaviors.
From the “I would prefer not” to what I feel
Aggressive passive behaviors can be more or less aware. In some cases these are forms of adaptation to social environments characterized by hierarchical logic and exasperated dynamics of power. In other cases it is an answer to the individual sensation of inferiority and helplessness which however cannot be expressing in different form. In other circumstances it is a series of behaviors that contrasts with individual, relational, couple and even corporate well -being. A path of psychological support or psychotherapy can be useful to recognize one’s resources in the expression of complex feelings such as those related to conflict and aggression. Going from the “I would prefer no” to the clear expression of what you feel, even if it is a painful or difficult to manage content because it is a source of potential contrast, is the first important step towards greater psychological well -being.
Cover image: Klaus Nielsen
