Aggressive Behaviour Quotes

Much hostile and aggressive behaviour among animals is the expression of social insecurity.

Complaints of feeling cut off, shut off, out of touch, feeling apart or strange, of things being out of focus or unreal, of not feeling one with people, or of the point having gone out of life, interest flagging, things seeming futile and meaningless, all describe in various ways this state of mind. Patients usually call it 'depression', but it lacks the heavy, black, inner sense of brooding, of anger and of guilt, which are not difficult to discover in classic depression. Depression is really a more extraverted state of mind, which, while the patient is turning his aggression inwards against himself, is part of a struggle not to break out into overt angry and aggressive behaviour. The states described above are rather the 'schizoid states'. They are definitely introverted. Depression is object-relational. The schizoid person has renounced objects, even though he still needs them.

We now know that gut microbes are part of this axis, in both directions. Since the 1970s, a trickle of studies have shown that any kind of stress – starvation, sleeplessness, being separated from one’s mother, the sudden arrival of an aggressive individual, uncomfortable temperatures, overcrowding, even loud noises – can change a mouse’s gut microbiome. The opposite is also true: the microbiome can affect a host’s behaviour, including its social attitudes and its ability to deal with stress.40

It seems bizarre that we would ever attempt to draw conclusions about the behaviour of people in deprived communities, let alone legislate for it, without allowing for the context of stress and how that in itself is a causal factor in comfort eating, smoking, gambling, binge drinking, substance misuse and various cultures of aggression and violence

Aggression in bears can be and often is a stepping stone to friendship. Friendship and alliances frequently develop by repeated interactions, with initial aggression that lessens over time.

Here, indeed, we encounter a curious phenomenon: the relevant mental processes, when seen in the mass, are more familiar, more accessible to our consciousness than they can ever be in the individual. In the individual only the aggression of the super-ego makes itself clearly heard, when tension arises, in the form of reproaches, while the demands themselves often remain unconscious in the background. When brought fully into consciousness, they are seen to coincide with the precepts of the current cultural super-ego. At this point there seems to be a regular cohesion, as it were, between the cultural development of the mass and the personal development of the individual. Some manifestations and properties of the super-ego can thus be recognized more easily by its behaviour in the cultural community than by its behaviour in the individual.

In seeing clients for more than a decade, I’ve found that passive-aggressiveness is the number one way we communicate our feelings and needs. When people describe their passive-aggressive behaviour, I say, “So you haven’t communicated your need, but you’ve acted it out?” The problem is that people can’t guess our needs based on our actions. They may not know what our behaviour means or even notice that we’re trying to communicate something new. Our desires simply have to be verbalised.

The Russells arrive at the same conclusion: "There is certainly no evidence from mamamalian behaviour that social aggression is more prevalent or intense among carnivores than among herbivores. And as for humans: "There is certainly no evidence that social violence has been more prevalent or intense in carnivorous hunting than in vegetarian agricultural societies. Hunting people have sometimes been extremely war-like; but no human group has produced more peaceful communities than some of the Eskimos, who have been carnivorous hunters, presumably, since the Old Stone Age.' The Samurai, on the other hand, were strict vegetarians; and so were the Hindu mobs in India which massacred their Moslem brethren whenever given a chance. It was not the eating of reindeer-steaks which caused the Fall.

Children hit first because aggression is innate, although more dominant in some individuals and less in others, and, second, because aggression facilitates desire. It’s foolish to assume that such behaviour must be learned. A snake does not have to be taught to strike.

Punishment always has “fallout.” That is you may punish a behaviour you didn’t intend to decrease, or you may promote aggression because of missed associations. Your dog may become distrustful of you. Punishment can contribute to arousal and anxiety levels, pushing them ever higher.

RED HEAD Tight, inhibited, results-oriented, anxious, aggressive, over-compensating, desperate. BLUE HEAD Loose, expressive, in the moment, calm, clear, accurate, on task. It’s what tennis coach Nick Bollettieri calls the ‘centipede effect’. If a centipede had to think about moving all its legs in the right order, it would freeze, the task too complex and daunting. The same is true of humans. Red is what Suvorov called ‘the Dark’. It is that fixated negative content loop of self-judgement, rigidity, aggression, shut down and panic. Blue is what he called ‘the Light’ – a deep calmness in which you are on task, in the zone, on your game, in control and in flow. It applies to the military; it applies to sport; it applies to business. In the heat of battle, the difference between the inhibitions of the Red and the freedom of Blue is the manner in which we control our attention. It works like this: where we direct our mind is where our thoughts will take us; our thoughts create an emotion; the emotion defines our behaviour; our behaviour defines our performance. So, simply, if we can control our attention, and therefore our thoughts, we can manage our emotions and enhance our performance.

When women and girls experienced throughout life such systematic sexual aggression from men it was realistic and reasonable for women to be resistant to and suspicious of male sexuality. The focus moved away from women as the problem to a critique of male sexual behaviour and an analysis of the ways in which men's sexual violence sustained their power.

When capital has bumped up against limits to profit-growth in the past, it has found fixes in things like colonisation, structural adjustment programmes, wars, restrictive patent laws, nefarious debt instruments, land grabs, privatisation, and enclosing commons like water and seeds. Why would it be any different this time? Indeed, a study by the ecological economist Beth Stratford finds that when capital faces resource constraints, this is exactly what happens: it turns to aggressive rent-seeking behaviour. It seeks to grab existing value wherever it can, with clever mechanisms to suck income and wealth from the public domain into private hands, and from the poor to the rich, exacerbating inequality.

Recalling this period a few years later, Goodall wrote, “The constant feeding was having a marked effect upon the behaviour of the chimps. They were beginning to move about in large groups more often than they had ever done in the old days. They were sleeping near camp and arriving in noisy hordes early in the morning. Worst of all, the adult males were becoming increasingly aggressive….

What it adds up to is that, with the advent of the pill, woman is beginning to get her finger on the genetic trigger. What she will do with it we cannot quite foresee. But it is a far cry from the bull who gets to be prolific just because he's tops at beating the daylights out all the other bulls. It may be that for homo sapiens in the future, extreme manifestations of the behaviour patterns of dominance and aggression will be evolutionary at a discount; and if that happens he will begin to shed them as once, long ago, he shed his coat of fur.

One eye-witness reported that: '...it seems more like the celebration of the orgies of Bacchus, than the memory of a pious saint, from the drunken quarrels and obscenities practised on these occasions. So little is there of devotion, or amendment of life or manners, that these places are frequently chosen for the scenes of pitched battles, fought with cudgels, by parties, not only of parishes, but of counties, set in formal array against each other, to revenge some real or supposed injury, and murders are not an unusual result of these meetings. It is hard to believe that many of those who took part in the fighting had originally gone in a spirit of pilgrimage to a holy well. But very often the two went together, at least in Ireland, and a seriously intended pilgrimage was often followed by boisterous and aggressive behaviour. Dr. Patrick Logan, who has made a modern study of Irish pilgrimages, commented: 'Pilgrims in any age are not noted for their piety, the Canterbury Tales make that clear, but anyone who has ever gone on a pilgrimage knows it is a memorable and enjoyable experience, something which is part of the nature of man. These days pilgrims may be called tourists.

socialised to be stoic, competitive, dominant and aggressive, the APA observes, have been proven to be less likely to engage in healthy behaviours, such as accessing preventative health care or looking after themselves – a tendency that extends to seeking out psychological help. However, even in the face of robust evidence that ‘men who bought into traditional notions of masculinity were more negative about seeking mental health services than those with more flexible gender attitudes’, MRAs prefer to die on the hill of defending those very same ‘traditional notions of masculinity’ than recognise that this could be a huge potential step towards tackling one of the greatest issues facing men today. They are, in other words, some of the most robust defenders of the precise problems they claim to want to eradicate.

In my long life, Ryadd, I have seen many variations—configurations—of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other—when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.

But the basis of Freud's ideas aren't accepted by all philosophers, though many accept that he was right about the possibility of unconscious thought. Some have claimed that Freud's theories are unscientific. Most famously, Karl Popper (whose ideas are more fully discussed in Chapter 36) described many of the ideas of psychoanalysis as ‘unfalsifiable’. This wasn't a compliment, but a criticism. For Popper, the essence of scientific research was that it could be tested; that is, there could be some possible observation that would show that it was false. In Popper's example, the actions of a man who pushed a child into a river, and a man who dived in to save a drowning child were, like all human behaviour, equally open to Freudian explanation. Whether someone tried to drown or save a child, Freud's theory could explain it. He would probably say that the first man was repressing some aspect of his Oedipal conflict, and that led to his violent behaviour, whereas the second man had ‘sublimated’ his unconscious desires, that is, managed to steer them into socially useful actions. If every possible observation is taken as further evidence that the theory is true, whatever that observation is, and no imaginable evidence could show that it was false, Popper believed, the theory couldn't be scientific at all. Freud, on the other hand, might have argued that Popper had some kind of repressed desire that made him so aggressive towards psychoanalysis. Bertrand

In my long life, Ryadd, I have seen many variations – configurations – of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other – when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.’ ‘Passive.’ ‘Of a sort, yes. It is more a matter of warning off potential adversaries. In effect, you are saying: Be careful how close you tread. You cannot hurt me, but if I am pushed hard enough, I will wound you. In some things you must never yield, but these things are not eternally changeless or explicitly inflexible; rather, they are yours to decide upon, yours to reshape if you deem it prudent. They are immune to the pressure of others, but not indifferent to their arguments. Weigh and gauge at all times, and decide for yourself value and worth. But when you sense that a line has been crossed by the other person, when you sense that what is under attack is, in fact, your self-esteem, then gird yourself and stand firm.

As the result of some observations I have made in recent years, I propose to add two new and previously undescribed varieties to the various forms of insanity with fixed ideas, whose underlying phenomenology is essentially phobic. The two new terms I would like to put forth, following the nomenclature currently accepted by leading clinicians, are dysmorphophobia and taphephobia. The first condition consists of the sudden appearance and fixation in the consciousness of the idea of one’s own deformity; the individual fears that he has become deformed (dysmorphos) or might become deformed, and experiences at this thought a feeling of an inexpressible disaster… The ideas of being ugly are not, in themselves, morbid; in fact, they occur to many people in perfect mental health, awakening however only the emotions normally felt when this possibility is contemplated. But, when one of these ideas occupies someone’s attention repeatedly on the same day, and aggressively and persistently returns to monopolise his attention, refusing to remit by any conscious effort; and when in particular the emotion accompanying it becomes one of fear, distress, anxiety, and anguish, compelling the individual to modify his behaviour and to act in a pre-determined and fixed way, then the psychological phenomena has gone beyond the bounds of normal, and may validly be considered to have entered the realm of psychopathology. The dysmorphophobic, indeed, is a veritably unhappy individual, who in the midst of his daily affairs, in conversations, while reading, at table, in fact anywhere and at any hour of the day, is suddenly overcome by the fear of some deformity that might have developed in his body without his noticing it. He fears having or developing a compressed, flattened forehead, a ridiculous nose, crooked legs, etc., so that he constantly peers in the mirror, feels his forehead, measures the length of his nose, examines the tiniest defects in his skin, or measures the proportions of his trunk and the straightness of his limbs, and only after a certain period of time, having convinced himself that this has not happened, is able to free himself from the state of pain and anguish the attack put him in. But should no mirror be at hand, or should he be prevented from quieting his doubts in some way or other with rituals or movements of the most outlandish kinds, the way a rhypophobic who cannot get water to wash himself might, the attack does not end very quickly, but may reach a very painful intensity, even to the point of weeping and desperation.

• There will be no warning vocalizations before the dog leaps on grabs and shakes the “prey.

The return journey was nothing like the arrival. Bea couldn’t wait to get out of the car. She remembered feeling like this before, with Brandon, on several occasions. It was an excruciating need to escape the confinement of being in too close a proximity to passive-aggressive behaviour. She hated conflict, after a row, it would take her hours, perhaps days to become fully relaxed and herself again. She became anxious, not entirely brought on by his coldness, but by old memories, and the way her body would instinctively react to them. It wasn’t a feeling that she wanted to experience with someone new, of whom she’d told his sister only a short time ago that she was falling in love with.

It was a pity that before I’d even started work on The Final Cut, Roger felt it necessary to announce aggressively that since whatever I did ‘was drumming’, I couldn’t claim either extra royalties or credit for any of this work. This really did seem like behaviour beginning to border on the megalomaniac, particularly since I posed no threat to his plans. I decided to look on the bright side: at least it was a way of escaping from the fraught atmosphere in the studio.

Unreasoning and unreasonable human nature causes two nations to compete, though no economic necessity compels them to do so; it induces two political parties or religions with amazingly similar programmes of salvation to fight each other bitterly and it impels an Alexander or a Napoleon to sacrifice millions of lives in his attempt to unite the world under his sceptre. We have been taught to regard some of the persons who have committed these and similar absurdities with respect, even as ‘great’ men, we are wont to yield to the political wisdom of those in charge, and we are all so accustomed to these phenomena that most of us fail to realize how abjectly stupid and undesirable the historical mass behaviour of humanity actually is.

It’s the behavioral pattern with many, in that having committed an indiscretion in the first place; they tend to assume an aggressive posture to provoke an argument, as though to obliterate the origins of their misdemeanor that led to the ordeal.

It is easier and more productive to teach your dog what TO DO than to keep telling him what NOT to do. Practice some or all of these at home until your dog has excellent responses. Do Not let them rehearse the aggressive/Reactive behaviour. It will become a habit! About The Clicker Clicker Basics We teach the dogs that the ‘Click’ is a clear signal that they have done something we like and will reward it. Why use the clicker? 1. It is clear, specific, unemotional communication to the dog. 2. It helps you to focus on the good things your dog is doing and recognize small improvements. You can pick out short moments of good behaviour. 3. While

Our eyes can distinguish several million colours, our ears can distinguish half a million tones, but our noses can distinguish well over a trillion different odours. Humans can detect virtually all volatile chemicals ever tested. Smells feature in our choice of sexual partners and in our ability to detect fear, anxiety or aggression in others. Human noses can detect some compounds at as low a concentration as 34,000 molecules in one square centimetre, the equivalent of a single drop of water in 20,000 Olympic swimming pools. For an animal to experience a smell, a molecule must land on their olfactory epithelium. In humans, this is a membrane up and behind the nose. The molecule binds to a receptor, and nerves fire. The brain gets involved as chemicals are identified or trigger thoughts and emotional responses. Fungi are equipped with different kinds of bodies. They don’t have noses or brains. Instead, their entire surface behaves like an olfactory epithelium. A mycelial network is one large chemically sensitive membrane: a molecule can bind to a receptor anywhere on its surface and trigger a signalling cascade that alters fungal behaviour. Fungi live their lives bathed in a rich field of chemical information. Truffle fungi use chemicals to communicate to animals their readiness to be eaten; they also use chemicals to communicate with plants, animals, other fungi – and themselves. Through smell, we can participate in the molecular discourse fungi use to organise much of their existence.

When aggressive norms are displayed, aggressive behaviour will also flow downward.12 Aggressive bosses could pave the way for team members becoming aggressive, and as a result the organization can be perceived as an aggressive one.

It’s important to be aware that many families are dysfunctional, but we can change the patterns. Even if a child grew up in an aggressive or addictive household, they can heal and move past that with immense emotional resilience, wisdom and gratitude. This is what recovery can offer anyone who, like you, is open-minded, willing and ready to explore self-awareness and take action.

Juggernaut of ignorance marauds the voices of wisdom. That explains the ultra anxious, subconsciously depressed minds trying to justify their irascible behaviour. Thus, unsettling the collective consciousness before they justify their aggressive view points.

Americans, wrote a historian of the period, were in general so ignorant of the realities on the ground that ‘when the Palestinians rose up in resistance they were able to see the Zionists’ increasingly aggressive, colonialist behaviour as a defence of democracy and other progressive Western ideals‘, while this ‘Palestinian resistance to imperialist invasion became a form of unwarranted offense against civilization’.28

Dogs in prey mode will silently and quickly approach their target. One fierce, very hard, full-mouth bite accompanied by shaking the selected target is a common indicator of predatory behaviour. The

Reducing physical aggression One of your son’s really annoying habits might be a tendency to hit or kick or push or grab when he is frustrated or angry. This is quite typical behaviour for an impulsive, very physical boy. He can get overwhelmed by his upset feelings. He may aim his blows for maximum impact, or he may be lashing out indiscriminately, not really knowing what he is doing. Either way, for his own sake and for the sake of everyone around him, you want to help him develop better impulse-control. The more you talk about his hitting, the more your son will think of himself as someone who hits and someone who gets told off for it. Instead, I want you to Descriptively Praise him when he is not hitting, kicking, biting, pushing, etc. You might be thinking, ‘But when he’s not hitting it’s because he’s not even angry. He’s not even thinking of hitting, so why take a chance and remind him that he could be hitting right now?’ You might prefer to say nothing at all about his misbehaviour. I’m asking you to notice and mention the absence of the negative, which I know seems very counter-intuitive. And if the annoying behaviour is a recurring problem, you will need to notice and mention when he is not doing it wrong many times a day. At odd times throughout the day, even when he is not upset and therefore not even tempted to be aggressive, you could simply say:   You’re not hitting.   You’re keeping your arms and legs to yourself.   When the baby knocked down your tower, you screamed, but you didn’t hit or kick. That showed self-control.   When he is angry but not reacting physically, you could add, ‘You’re controlling yourself,’ or ‘You’re not hurting anyone,’ (and remember to keep your distance if you can see, or even just sense, that he is in a volatile mood and might become aggressive).

Thus the continuation of the master tutor and willing servant students, the privileging of the visual, the inculcation of absurd modes of behaviour (sleep deprivation, aggressive defensiveness, internal competition), the raising of individuals on to pedestals, all these and more self-perpetuate in schools of architecture around the world, a strange form of interbreeding with tutors passing the architectural gene to students who in turn become tutors who perform the same rituals.

The trials of evolution programme a human race for aggression, not wisdom. And once capitalism gets underway human relationships become regulated by systems that deliver behaviour into a killing zone of selfishness and greed. The Tension Dynamic, p165

Like most radicals he seems not to have realized that people who quietly conform may feel as deeply about their ideology as those who aggressively try to inflict an opposing one. The remarks about the Romillys were cruel and tasteless, but so was Esmond’s behaviour.

In Defense of Violence” he noted that “[m]odern middle class culture is exceptional in the degree to which it tries to suppress aggression,” despite the fact that aggression is a “normal part of the behavioural repertoire of human beings and of most other mammals.”[400] Some responsible therapists lament that among their clients, many men exhibit frighteningly low testosterone levels because the society actively deprives them of traditional opportunities to maintain high levels and shames activities which embody masculinity. This is not to suggest, of course, that acceptance of violence in pre-modern times was uniquely exhibited by men. He notes near the end of the essay that tribal warfare was common among some Native American tribes precisely because the women in the tribes tended to egg on the fighting.

When knowledge runs out, aggression hastens in

Sociopaths are often described as being unfeeling towards others, selfishly pursuing their own needs and using aggression to get what they want. Despite a vague sense that sociopathy denotes serious antisocial behaviour, no separate, well-validated assessment instrument for sociopathy exists.

In recent decades, aspiration has been heavily wrapped up not in what we aim to do, achieve or create but in what we can afford to buy. Young adults and teenagers have been under more and more pressure to be successful with fewer means to do so. Brands have aggressively told us that the road to contentment is through consumption.

Autistic behaviour in men is better accepted, or swept under the rug with a dismissive “ah well, men…” This can also be seen in TV shows, Anna de Hooge argues in her thesis. She watched shows like Sherlock and The Big Bang Theory and concluded that the “autistic” characters get away with exceptionally dickish, aggressive or inappropriate behaviour, such as spying on the girl next door or completely ignoring someone else’s authority.

Siblings who experience this kind of violence, or who witness parents being attacked, run the risk of developing anxiety and depression. Siblings who are on the receiving end of aggressive behaviour and who are heavily involved in care are the ones who have the most difficulties long term,

It’s important not to let the aggressive behaviour escalate, and to seek help from professionals before things get too bad. In some rare cases the violence can get extreme. Parents could call the NAS to see what behavioural support programmes there are locally.

Poker players explained to me that there’s a particular moment at which players are extremely vulnerable to an emotional surge. It’s not when they’ve won a huge pot or when they’ve drawn a fantastic hand. It’s when they’ve just lost a lot of money through bad luck (a ‘bad beat’) or bad strategy. The loss can nudge a player into going ‘on tilt’ – making overly aggressive bets in an effort to win back what he wrongly feels is still his money. The brain refuses to register that the money has gone. Acknowledging the loss and recalculating one’s strategy would be the right thing to do, but that is too painful. Instead, the player makes crazy bets to rectify what he unconsciously believes is a temporary situation. It isn’t the initial loss that does for him, but the stupid plays he makes in an effort to deny that the loss has happened. The eat economic psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky summarised the behaviour in their classic analysis of the psychology of risk: ‘a person who has not made peace with his losses is likely to accept gambles that would be unacceptable to him otherwise’. Even those of us who aren’t professional poker players know how it feels to chase a loss.

Aided and abetted by Austria-Hungary, Germany’s behaviour in July 1914 was the most important single factor in bringing about the First World War. The German leadership wanted hegemony in Europe and was prepared to go to war to achieve it. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, the ‘war guilt clause’, which declared that the Great War was ‘imposed upon’ the Allies ‘by the aggression of Germany and her allies’ was, therefore, fundamentally correct.

However, recent research on the mechanisms of evolution is revealing adaptations which are not traceable to individual genes. It’s long been known that many plants – e.g. juniper and fat-hen – can exist in different forms in different habitats without there being any discernible genetic variation between the types. It now looks as if these ‘epigenetic’ effects can be produced in individual plants within a very few seasons or generations, by a process as simple as transplantation. Some of this adaptive behaviour is controlled by master gene complexes which are both very ancient and occur right across the living world. The large, aggressive, ‘weedy’ rosebay may in fact be the original form which developed in open and disturbed post-glacial conditions, and the smaller, daintier form an epigenetic adaptation to shade and woodland. The ancestral form was ‘switched on’ again when humans created facsimiles of the flower’s original home.

Stories can also be nocebos. In a recent study, psychologist Bryan Gibson demonstrated that watching Lord of the Flies-type television can make people more aggressive.25 In children, the correlation between seeing violent images and aggression in adulthood is stronger than the correlation between asbestos and cancer, or between calcium intake and bone mass.26 Cynical stories have an even more marked effect on the way we look at the world. In Britain, another study demonstrated that girls who watch more reality TV also more often say that being mean and telling lies are necessary to get ahead in life.27 As media scientist George Gerbner summed up: ‘[He] who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behaviour.’28

Have you ever watched a group of boys together? Look at them. They punch one another. They push. There’s a lot of aggression, even if it looks like friendly aggression. It’s really odd, but it explains a lot about how males are. And about the world, I suppose. About wars and ecological irresponsibility and bad behaviour generally.

The one thing Eric hadn’t tried in an effort to improve his relationship with his parents was to set boundaries with them. He believed he’d set them by telling his mother, “I don’t like Dad’s drinking” and occasionally ignoring his fathers phone calls. But I gently explained to Eric that these were passive-aggressive attempts. When we passive-aggressively set boundaries, we say something indirectly to the other person, or we speak to someone who isn’t in a position to resolve the issue. He assumed Paul would catch the hint, but his father remained clueless. Instead of being direct with his dad, Eric tried for so long to ignore his own concerns and act like everything was normal. In this way, Eric’s behaviour was passive-aggressive; he acted frustrated without communicating his desires to his father.

[On subjugation]: Although there may be times when you display your anger directly, it is more common for you to express it indirectly, in a disguised fashion – passive-aggressively. You get back at people in subtle ways, like procrastinating, being late, or talking about them behind their backs. You may do this unknowingly. Passive-aggressive behaviours – procrastinating, talking behind other people's backs, agreeing to do something and not following through, making excuses – all share the feature that they irritate other people, but it is difficult for other people to know whether the passive-aggressive person intends the irritation.

I identified four inherited traits that lead to criminal behaviour: impulsiveness, fearlessness, aggression and hyperactivity. But my big theory is that certain ways of raising children counteract those traits and turn potential criminals into good citizens.

We live in a time when everyone must bear arms on behalf of something on the outside of them that moves on the inside of their hearts. We no longer live in an era where peace was equivalent to detachment. Peace thanks to detachment is just an unwillingness to commit to being alive. That era is over. Peace by means of invalidation is over. Peace through the validation of what is essential to others, is the only way through this now. I validate you, you validate me, we validate each other, we are attached to each other. Peace through the acknowledgement of what is human. This is the way forward. "Invalidation" is an act of tyranny that is carried out daily at the personal level, between friends, family, lovers, co-workers, etc. It is the easiest and most prevalent form of "little tyrannies" that are enacted upon, and are carried out every day. Invalidating another's experience, feeling, thought, action, by making it seem irrelevant or small, is cowardice, and at the root of it is a fear of living life beyond your own borders. We talk about national borders all the time, when in reality, it's the borders that we place between ourselves and the people close to us, that take profound effect in human lives, on the daily. There is even a spiritual movement in the New Age group that focuses so much on putting up borders, that these borders are simply passive aggressive behaviours designed to pamper a person in their own preconceived or misconceived bubbles. The borders are old and that era is over. Peace in this new era is not about sitting on top of a rock in alienation to gain a selfish version of peace. Peace, in our new era now, is about the realisation that peace for all is peace for one! We now bear arms for battles happening beyond our own little worlds because this is what it means to be the new human.

Cognitive-behavioural therapists call the treatment of such people, generally characterized by the more feminine traits of agreeableness (politeness and compassion) and neuroticism (anxiety and emotional pain), “assertiveness training.”197 Insufficiently aggressive women—and men, although more rarely—do too much for others. They tend to treat those around them as if they were distressed children. They tend to be naïve. They assume that cooperation should be the basis of all social transactions, and they avoid conflict (which means they avoid confronting problems in their relationships as well as at work). They continually sacrifice for others. This may sound virtuous—and it is definitely an attitude that has certain social advantages—but it can and often does become counterproductively one-sided. Because too-agreeable people bend over backwards for other people, they do not stand up properly for themselves. Assuming that others think as they do, they expect—instead of ensuring—reciprocity for their thoughtful actions. When this does not happen, they don’t speak up. They do not or cannot straightforwardly demand recognition. The dark side of their characters emerges, because of their subjugation, and they become resentful.

And while taking oestrogen made him cry more and change his taste in movies, when testosterone came back into his body it had an equally ‘sexist’ set of effects. He noticed a lot of common behaviours. He became more angry, more aggressive and – yes – far more horny. Today he has been off hormones for more than two years. But the effects of his time ‘transitioning’ across the sexes is still with him.

When the females are ready to shed their shells and soften up a bit, they become interested in mating. They start hanging around the dominant lobster’s pad, spraying attractive scents and aphrodisiacs towards him, trying to seduce him. His aggression has made him successful, so he’s likely to react in a dominant, irritable manner. Furthermore, he’s large, healthy and powerful. It’s no easy task to switch his attention from fighting to mating. (If properly charmed, however, he will change his behaviour towards the female. This is the lobster equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest-selling paperback of all time, and the eternal Beauty-and-the-Beast plot of archetypal romance. This is the pattern of behaviour continually represented in the sexually explicit literary fantasies that are as popular among women as provocative images of naked women are among men.)

Every social situation is fraught with ambiguity, knee-deep in complication, hidden meanings, veiled power-struggles, passive-aggression and paranoid confusion.

Many of the female clients (perhaps even a majority) that I see in my clinical practice have trouble in their jobs and family lives not because they are too aggressive, but because they are not aggressive enough. Cognitive-behavioural therapists call the treatment of such people, generally characterized by the more feminine traits of agreeableness (politeness and compassion) and neuroticism (anxiety and emotional pain), “assertiveness training.”197 Insufficiently aggressive women—and men, although more rarely—do too much for others. They tend to treat those around them as if they were distressed children. They tend to be naïve. They assume that cooperation should be the basis of all social transactions, and they avoid conflict (which means they avoid confronting problems in their relationships as well as at work). They continually sacrifice for others. This may sound virtuous—and it is definitely an attitude that has certain social advantages—but it can and often does become counterproductively one-sided. Because too-agreeable people bend over backwards for other people, they do not stand up properly for themselves. Assuming that others think as they do, they expect—instead of ensuring—reciprocity for their thoughtful actions. When this does not happen, they don’t speak up. They do not or cannot straightforwardly demand recognition. The dark side of their characters emerges, because of their subjugation, and they become resentful.

In love I found more of humanity than in the violent aggression of erratic behaviour that plagues me; to love is to live, may we all do so.

This in turn reduces that country’s foreign policy options. Latvia, Slovakia, Finland and Estonia are 100 per cent reliant on Russian gas, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Lithuania are 80 per cent dependent, and Greece, Austria and Hungary 60 per cent. About half of Germany’s gas consumption comes from Russia, which, along with extensive trade deals, is partly why German politicians tend to be slower to criticise the Kremlin for aggressive behaviour than a country such as Britain, which not only has 13 per cent dependency, but also has its own gas-producing industry, including reserves of up to nine months’ supply.

What amused me as put down my notepad and wrote the place, time and date at the top of it, was the thought that if anyone, let alone me, suggested to these young males that they were responding to me on a sexual level, they would be horrified – I was old enough to be their mother, after all. But even so, they could not stop themselves from rising to the challenge. Here was I, an unknown female in their midst, in a situation in which they were potentially on show. Perhaps some of them, on top of that, were nursing a lurking Mrs Robinson fantasy or maybe some of them were intimidated by young women of their own age and preferred the idea of someone more motherly – but even if neither of these factors came into play, there was something in them that responded to me on a very elemental level, even if all they wanted was the thought of being able to brag about it afterwards: that examiner, thinks she going to fuck me over with her marking pen, well, I’ll fuck her. It was simple aggression on their part – that’s all really, chimpanzee behaviour. It amused me. I was safe, after all, and in a position of power.

As we have progressed on our journey of learning, we are confronted with the glaringly obvious fact that most are imprisoned within their world views by FEAR. Fear is the reason people succumb to the structural incentives and penalties to ignore, dismiss or suppress any evidence or information which challenges their “comfortable and familiar” world view. To “march out of step” to bridge the reality gap requires courage, the courage to challenge our preconceptions and beliefs; those who “step out of line” risk ridicule, opprobrium and worse. Fear comes in many and various guises and is similarly betrayed in multiple behaviours, not least, aggression or retreat in the face of facts or uncomfortable truths. When confronted with information which shows people that their governments and all the institutions in which they trust, kill, steal and corrupt everything they touch, most are inclined, like children, to stick their hands over their ears and sing loudly, “la, la, la, we’re not listening because you’re a bat-shit crazy, tin-foil hat wearing, conspiracy theorist spouting Nazi hate speech [aka. Uncomfortable Truth] ”.

Once we are able to interpret someone’s pain-inducing behaviour as having roots in their own pain, we’re on the threshold of a remarkable steps. It then appears that in truth, no one in this world is ever simply ‘nasty’. They are always hurt – and this means that the appropriate response to humanity is not fear, cynicism or aggression, but love. Once we relinquish our egos, and loosen ourselves from the grip of our primitive defensive and aggressive thought-processes, we are free to consider humanity in a much more benign light. We might even, at an extreme (this might happen only very late at night once in a while), feel that we could love everyone, that no human could be outside the circle of our sympathy.

But separation is not the only circumstance prompting avoidance behaviour. According to Mary Main and Donna R. Weston, mothers who show aversion to physical contact with the infant during the first three months of the infant’s life are likely to induce avoidance behaviour in the infant by the end of its first year. Mothers who demonstrate angry or threatening behaviour also induce avoidance in their infants. Mothers of mother-avoidant infants mocked their infants or spoke sarcastically to or about them; some stared them down.10 Mothers who go further and actually batter their babies produce infants who, as compared with controls, are more avoidant of peers and care-givers in response to friendly overtures, more likely to assault and threaten to assault them, and more likely to show unpredictable aggressive behaviour toward care-givers.11 In addition, mothers who are coldly unresponsive, that is, who show neither pleasure in response to their infants nor any reaction even when attacked by them, cause avoidance behaviour in their infants. None of these descriptions of maternal behaviour implies that such behaviour is the only cause of avoidance in the infant. Genetic differences, or brain damage, may also be implicated.

The processing, letting go and healing from an abusive / toxic relationship is an emotionally challenging detachment, especially without (proper) closure. It required a conscientious effort of personal introspection, own behaviour modification, resilience, forgiveness and acceptance to move beyond the realms of just accepting someone else's (false) sense of entitlement, lack of respect and incessant aggressive behaviour tendencies