Gaslighting Or Passive Aggression

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Passive-aggressive defense is present not only in men, but also in women, but in men it is more common. For modern women, an explicit, open form of aggression has become more characteristic.

Implicit, hidden aggression is expressed in the absence of open initiative, in shifting responsibility onto others, in indecision, in creating a fog of uncertainty and ambiguity in relationships, in the frequent use of lies and empty apologies. Passive aggression is a chronic non-fulfillment in time and in substance of agreements and promises, postponing things from day to day, a strange forgetfulness in fulfilling requests. This is ignoring the expectations of others, devaluing the interlocutor, for example, in the form of crossing out his reality - "You make it up", "You do it wrong," etc., as well as interrupting, avoiding answering questions, from the topic proposed by the interlocutor. A passive-aggressive man uses these techniques out of fear of being dependent, fear of competition and emotional closeness. In men, in this case, there is a latent hostility towards women, a refusal of responsibility for male social functions and the distortion of real facts for this purpose.

In life, this type of aggression, due to its implicit nature, is not perceived as aggression, it has not yet been exposed by public consciousness. Passive aggression thrives as a socially tolerant form of behavior. It is widespread and penetrates deeply into all areas of human relations, therefore, it is especially toxic and destructive both for business and for any interpersonal contacts.

Problems with a passive-aggressive man arise from his indirect and inadequate way of expressing hostility, hidden under the guise of innocence, generosity or passivity (a form of self-deprecation). If what he says or does is incomprehensible to you, or rather makes you angry, this is passive aggression.

The term itself seems paradoxical, and the question arises: how can a person be both passive and aggressive at the same time, and not just one thing? … A passive-aggressive man is never passive today and aggressive tomorrow. Rather, a passive-aggressive man is both passive and aggressive at the same time. The paradox is that he abandons his aggression when it manifests itself."

One woman told me that her husband painted half of the window frames in their bedroom and has been promising to finish the job for two years now. When guests ask why the frames are gray and white, she replies, "The phone rang." For many years she tried to suppress her irritation and frustration with a sense of humor, but unfinished work is always in front of her eyes.

The main feature of a passive-aggressive man is his alienation from his own masculinity as from a powerful protective force. Becoming an adult, he remains painfully dependent on both the real mother and the image of the mother that has formed in his personality. Carrying this maternal image as the only well-functioning defense mechanism, a man looks for the same figure in the women he meets - this is how he childishly strives for safety. Such a man strives for female “saviors” or “administrators”. This dependence leads the passive-aggressive man to dependence on many external objects, including social structures that provide "care".

A healthy male strategy is that a woman should be conquered in the inevitable natural competition with other men. A passive-aggressive man prefers to be conquered, as he is panicky afraid of rejections, battles and defeats. He suffers from a painful dependence on the evaluations of others, an obsessive need for acceptance on their part, especially on the part of women. At the same time, he seeks to hide this addiction by rejecting and devaluing women. He can also devalue many things that matter to him. This is how the desire to gain masculine strength, freedom and independence is reflected in the behavior of an immature man.

So, a passive-aggressive man is an immature man who has yet to connect with his natural masculine spiritual strength and inner all-healing and replenishing masculine femininity …

… Any man has a natural natural aggression from the beginning. A passive-aggressive man in this sense has a kind of internal "bomb". And if this "bomb" remains in the unconscious, that is, until the male aggression is realized and its vector is not yet directed towards defense, it, being suppressed (passive) or openly manifested in the form of an explosion, is capable of blindly destroying both the man himself and and the world around him. A mature man differs from a passive-aggressive man in that he is in contact with his natural male aggression and knows how to use it in a targeted manner to protect the female and children's worlds, to protect his interests and the interests of those for whom he has taken responsibility.

In the myth of Chrétien de Trois "On the Holy Grail" - a unique illustration of the ascent of the masculine principle to the highest stages of maturity - there is the Red Knight. He personifies uninitiated natural male aggression. The Red Knight is dressed in red robes, even his armor and horse blanket are red. The natural strength in the person of the Red Knight is still unbridled and sowing evil. The Red Knight openly enjoys his superiority, humiliates and plunders until the hero of the myth - Parsifal (which means "naive fool"), traveling in search of his male destiny, defeats him. Robert A. Johnson, analyzing the myth of "The Holy Grail" in his book "He: The Deepest Aspects of Male Psychology", notes that every man on the way to his maturity has to defeat his inner Red Knight. In other words, every man has to transform natural male aggression into a powerful protective function, otherwise the Red Knight will completely take over and make his personality overwhelming everyone and everything.

… Women have no idea what a long and difficult path (a man) has to go from his dear, irreplaceable, caring mother and embark on a path of trials that is completely different from the one she went through, where it is no longer possible to use either mother's experience or advice. From this point of view, it can be noted that a girl should try to be like her mother, while a boy should learn to be different from her …

Brute male power, being uninitiated, paradoxically, leads men to self-doubt, isolation and alienation from their own feelings. This alienation leads to the loss of contact with the female part of the personality - with the world of the Soul, where not only feelings live, but also the inspiring and healing powers of his Inner Woman so necessary for any man are stored. Separated from their Soul, men seek contact with it in numerous contacts with real women.

Male maturity is manifested primarily in the way a man treats women and children. If the need to protect them and take care of them becomes his deepest need, that is, if a man achieves in his development such a fullness of masculine protective will, which forms a natural outflow for an indignant, outgoing stream, we can talk about male maturity. So in the inner world - the mature masculine principle, first of all, protects femininity. Only being protected, femininity (Soul) is able to “spread its wings” and give its defender the divine experience of flight!

… A man who grew up in conditions of a deficit of male protection and an exaggerated maternal principle has an infantile (immature) masculinity, from which he himself and modern society as a whole suffer. And since many men from childhood get a distorted, surrogate feminine principle, depressive and suppressed, on the one hand, and on the other - overloaded with masculine features of the mother, such a man would rather win or destroy than protect a woman.

The unprotected female part of the male personality includes hyper-maternal functions to protect itself. A man, whose Anima contains an overdeveloped hypermother structure, suffers from an unconscious obsessive desire to free himself from its influence and reject its controlling essence. He gets stuck at the stage of separation - separation from the parental family. Such stuckness can take not only the appearance of depression, alcohol or drug addiction, but also look like neurotic nihilism (denial of any values, norms, rules), or it turns into a frequent change of place of work and residence. This protest can be unknowingly expressed by a man through a series of failed marriages, relentlessly fighting his wives instead of defeating the overwhelming feminine aspect within himself. Insufficiently mature men unconsciously perceive women with hostility and / or caution. It seems to them that having won their recognition from women, they should either separate, free themselves, since a woman is unconsciously perceived primarily as a controlling mother, or win over them in a competitive struggle if a woman is unconsciously perceived as a sister.

The desire to conquer one's inner hypermother structure, to free oneself from under its influence can become chronic and, reaching neurotic obsession, manifest itself in the need to "take revenge" not only on women, but also on the world as a whole.