Passive-Aggressive is a form of personality disorder. In order to have an in depth understanding of the factors that triggered to the development of such personality disorder, we incorporated three personality development theories in our study.
Psychodynamic Theory
According to Sigmund Freud (1920), human behavior and relationships are shaped by conscious and unconscious influences. This theory emphasizes the overriding influence of instinctive drives and forces, and the importance of developmental experiences in shaping personality.
Freud (1920) placed great emphasis to the individuals repressed or unconscious thoughts that we cannot voluntarily access, and the conflicts between conscious and unconscious forces that influence our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Conscious thoughts refer to our wishes, desires, or thoughts that we are aware of, and we can always recall at any given moment. While unconscious forces refer to our wishes, desires, or thoughts that, because of their disturbing or threatening content, we automatically repress and cannot voluntarily access.
For the theorists that followed Freud, it was impossible to uncover an individuals’ unconscious. But Freud introduced three techniques to uncover the unconscious; Free Association, Dream Interpretation, and Freudian Slips.
Psychosocial Theory
Like Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson (1968) believed that personality develops in a series of predetermined stages but unlike Freud’s psychodynamic theory, Erikson focused on the impact of social experiences across the whole lifespan. Erikson (1968) theorized that the course of development is determined by the interaction of the body (genetic biological programming), mind (psychological), and cultural (ethos) influences.
One of the major elements of Erikson’s theory is the development of the individual’s ego identity. It refers to the conscious sense that an individual develops through social interaction. It is continually changing due to the new experiences and new information that an individual acquires in his/her daily social interaction with others (Erikson, 1968).
Each stage in Erikson’s theory is concerned with becoming competent in an area of life. If the stage is handled well, the individual will feel a sense of mastery, which Erikson (1968) sometimes referred to as ego strength or ego quality. If the stage is managed poorly, the individual will emerge with a sense of inadequacy. In each stage, Erikson (1968) believed that individuals experience conflict that serves as a turning point in development. In Erikson’s point of view, these conflicts are centered on either developing a psychological quality or failing to develop that quality. During these times, the potential for personal growth is high, but so is the potential for failure (Erikson, 1968).
Interpersonal Theory
According to Harry Stack Sullivan (1953), our personality is shaped almost entirely by the relationships that we have with other people. The quality of a certain relationship is very important for Sullivan (1953), because he believed that a relationship has the power to transform an immature preadolescent into a psychologically healthy individual.
Sullivan (1953) viewed personality as an energy system that holds tensions (potentiality for action) and is capable of energy transformation (the actions themselves). He further subdivided tensions into needs and anxiety. An individual’s needs include tenderness and intimacy from other people especially that of the mothering one, while anxiety develops due to the empathic relationship that an individual have with his/her mother (Sullivan, 1953).
According to Sullivan (1953), through social interactions an individual develops a personification of himself/herself and others. These personifications for Sullivan (1953) are mental images that allow an individual to better understand him/her and the world. There are three basic ways that an individual sees himself/herself; the bad-me, the good-me, and the not-me (Sullivan, 1953).
The bad-me represents the aspect of an individual that is considered negative and is therefore hidden from others and possibly even from the individual himself/herself. The good-me represents the part of an individual that is shared with others while the not-me represents all the things that are so anxiety provoking that an individual cannot even consider them as part of him/her (Sullivan, 1953).
Figure 1: Theoretical Framework
As shown above in figure 1, personality development is a continuous process supported by three personality development theories. Failure to attain the needs of an individual in each stage of personality development would lead to conflicts that would result to the developing of a personality development disorder.
Figure 2: Conceptual Framework
Personality is what makes an individual unique as a person. Personality development occurs by the ongoing interaction of temperament, character and environment.
As shown in Figure 2, personality development starts as soon as the child went outside the mother’s womb (Freud, 1920). Personality develops through a set of genetically determined traits that determine the child’s approach to the world and how he/she would learn about the world. There may be no genes that specify personality traits, but some genes do control the development of the nervous system, which in turn controls behavior.
Personality is developed through the direct social experiences of the child with hi/her parents. The growth of a child’s personality is motivated the affections that the child receives from his/her socializing with others. John Bowlby (1969) contributed to this new emphasis on the child’s relationship with his/her parents in his books on attachment parenting. Bowlby (1969) argued that the nature of the child’s relationship to the caretakers and especially to the mothering one created a profile of emotional reactions toward adults that might last indefinitely.
Everyone has our favorites. Even when an individual is still a fetus he/she has subconsciously made his/her “favored–parent”. The fetus would then proceed to subconsciously take-on the behavioral patterns and pattern-ideas of his/her “favored-parent”. This personality would further develop when the child mingles with the society.
Passive-Aggressive relationship would develop if a child was brought up in a bad family scenario. The child would be embodied with a negative outlook towards life that would lead to complications and personality problems. If the child also doesn’t socialize well he/she would have a bigger tendency to develop an anti-social personality.
Figure 3: Operational Framework
As shown in figure 3, there are a lot of factors that influences the individual’s personality development. The child’s personality is dependent to his/her parents, school, friends and the society. The quality of the parent-child relationship is also dependent to the above mentioned variables. These independent variables were acquired from the great personality theorists; Freud, Erikson, and Sullivan.
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