A starting point: aggressiveness is not violence

In everyday language, calling someone aggressive is hardly a compliment. Yet what follows rests on a different definition: aggressiveness as a force in the service of survival, to be distinguished from aggression, which is an act, and from violence, which puts force at the service of destroying the other.

Seen this way, aggressiveness stops being merely pejorative. It becomes a capacity: aggressive competence. We do not all possess it to the same degree — watching very young children in daycare is enough to see that they are not equipped in the same way — and it keeps evolving throughout life, with experience.

These markers are particularly useful for understanding phenomena of violence, whether within a couple, within a family, at work or in society at large. They apply as much to therapy as to every relational profession, and they prompt each of us to consider our own place — in our couple, in our family, in our team.

The top of the scale

The scale has six rungs, three above and three below a zone of balance. The first three describe increasing degrees of expression of aggressiveness.

+1: the healthy zone of aggressiveness

People here stand in a moderate, well-adapted expression of aggressiveness. They are equipped enough to make their position, their opinion, their point of view heard; they readily try to convince. They accept confrontation, debate and conflict without fear, but the expression of their aggressiveness remains controlled. They can offer protection to anyone who needs it and mark out the boundaries of their territory or of their group’s. When attacked, or when their territory is encroached upon, they defend themselves — they may even attack in turn — but without any wish to destroy the other. That point is essential.

In a team, an institution or a company, these are the people able to sustain a genuine debate and to move ideas towards the resolution of problems. Rather proactive, they look for solutions, voice them and try to implement them. They are often found in altruistic leadership roles: others follow them out of respect, not fear. In positions of power they frequently make the best leaders, able to hand out the credit while shouldering the blame — where poor leaders do exactly the opposite. The same reasoning holds in the family and in the couple: they can carry a conflict without physical or verbal excess.

They may occasionally step into the next zone and move into aggression: when they are themselves attacked, or cornered in a situation where resorting to force seems unavoidable. In the vast majority of cases, they later regret having acted out.

+2: excessive expression

Here the expression becomes excessive, at times brutal. Compared with the previous group, these people move more readily into aggression in order to get their ideas across — most often verbally, sometimes physically. Here again, in the vast majority of cases, these aggressions are not intended to destroy the other. Their aggressive capacity is highly developed, and they may fail to gauge the damage they cause. It is as though the mechanisms that inhibit aggressiveness were somewhat less developed than at the previous rung.

These acts take widely varying forms. A vehement tone or a punch is easy to identify; but in a social or professional setting where the expression of aggressiveness is frowned upon, it appears far more subtly: in looks, in contempt, in a displayed lack of respect towards someone or towards a colleague’s work. That too is a form of aggression, once respect is regarded as owed between people. In a couple, these individuals more readily make small intrusions into the other’s territory, often without realising it. Such aggressions do not aim to harm: they aim to control, to make the other comply, to make them submit.

In positions of power, these people are often feared, where those of the previous rung are respected. Nothing is fixed, however: they can develop capacities for inhibition and move back down towards a zone that works better relationally.

+3: when inhibition no longer exists

Fortunately few in number, the people at this rung are those in whom the inhibition of aggressiveness is virtually non-existent. Their relational mode is marked by repeated aggressions and by the will to dominate the other, to make them give way, to impose their point of view by acting out. Beyond the mechanisms of inhibition, what has failed here is the internalisation of the law. The acting out occurs in nearly every sphere: social, professional, family, friendship. The other is perceived as an obstacle to the fulfilment of their own desires. This is obviously the level at which we begin to speak of violence.

These are the people we read about in the news pages, and who fill the prisons. They tend to act with complete impunity as soon as they escape the eye of the law. Some act in the name of a higher authority rather than in their own: in the name of a political or religious power. Within the family, they impose their authority like tyrants and may use violence to make the other submit. When confronted, they justify their acts by shifting the blame onto the other: it was the other who forced them to “correct” them, to bring them “back into line”. They do not question themselves — the violent act does not appear reprehensible to them, but legitimate. These are the individuals most often involved in phenomena of intimate partner violence.

Contrary to what one might think, they are not necessarily the ones who occupy positions of power: repeated acting out usually ends up removing them from such positions. But that is a feature of our era. Throughout human history, this particular aggressive competence was long that of the heroes who were glorified, of the men whose strength and courage were admired.

The bottom of the scale

On the other side are the people who struggle to put their aggressiveness to use. The model is particularly valuable here: it makes visible a difficulty that is often misread as a lack of willingness.

−1: voluntary accommodation

These people have no particular facility for mobilising their aggressiveness. They readily avoid conflict, care little for confrontation and take a rather withdrawn position in an exchange — but they are able to defend themselves when attacked. That point is decisive.

In a working group they are not merely appreciated but indispensable. They do not try at all costs to impose their opinion; they contribute to collective thinking and move it forward from a position one might call passive leadership: they intervene very pertinently when asked, or when a discussion needs reviving. They hate conflict, but they do not hate themselves: that base of self-esteem means that, beyond a certain limit, when attacked, they mobilise their aggressiveness to defend themselves — and they can be highly critical of those who fail to control theirs.

They display remarkable skills: voicing criticism without bruising the other, expressing an idea in such a way that the other can believe it was their own, sacrificing some of their own wishes so that more aggressive people can satisfy theirs. At work as in the family, they are the ones who help those who took the initiative to see their project through. Picture a meeting made up solely of individuals from the top of the scale: the cacophony would be monumental and little would come of it. Add people from the −1 zone: their talent for mediation, their ability to reformulate so that everyone understands one another, changes everything.

−2: forced accommodation

Here a genuine deficit in the expression of aggressiveness appears. These people find it very hard to have their territory respected, and are sometimes unable to defend themselves against an aggression, whether verbal or physical. Uncertainty about their own existence is fairly striking: they easily become dependent on the desires, the wishes and the initiatives of others.

The main risk is that, in any social group, they will sooner or later meet people from the top of the scale. They come out of those encounters with frustration or with a sense of victimisation that damages their self-esteem a little further — and the less solid their self-esteem, the less able they are to mobilise their aggressiveness against the next aggression. The circle is vicious: every aggression not pushed back makes the next one harder to push back.

They are experts at soothing conflict — but they soothe it at their own expense: by suffering, by keeping quiet, by taking upon themselves the task of minimising the other’s aggressiveness. In return they develop a whole set of alternative skills, notably tenderness and attachment, which earn them a valued place among family or colleagues. They often appear disinterested, putting their skills at the service of someone else’s desires — often those of whoever takes on the role of protector, since these people are frequently in active search of one.

Nothing about the outcome is written in advance. The heart of the work consists precisely in helping these people regain confidence in themselves and allow themselves to mobilise their aggressiveness in order to defend themselves. It is patient strengthening work, which restores worth before it restores force.

−3: the zone of submission

At the very bottom of the scale, the capacity to defend oneself and to mobilise one’s aggressiveness is almost entirely absent. This is not a strategic submission awaiting an opportunity to revolt: it is an almost permanent existential position. In these people, aggressiveness has virtually no psychic representation. One observes a form of passivity, resignation, acceptance of suffering — and, seen from outside, the sometimes striking impression that even the survival reflex is missing.

What plays out between two rungs

The scale takes on its full meaning once we stop using it to classify individuals and apply it to encounters instead.

Two “+1” people form a symmetrical relationship: each mobilises their aggressive capacities to get their ideas heard, which can escalate into situations that are sometimes hard to hold. Outside the couple, this pairing often makes for excellent professional duos: aggressiveness is directed towards completing a task, and even arguments end up producing something constructive. Between two “+2” people, symmetrical escalations reach far greater proportions. Between two “+3” people, it is the law of the strongest: whoever will crush the other in order to dominate them.

This does not mean that other pairings are doomed: functional balances exist at many levels of the scale.

What it is good for, concretely

You can amuse yourself by placing yourself on this scale, then placing those close to you or your colleagues. The value of the model lies elsewhere: it relieves guilt and casts certain situations in a new light.

Take a couple in which one partner repeatedly reproaches the other for a lack of initiative — about family life, about the children, sometimes about their sexual life. Discovering that the partner may have a deficit in the expression of aggressiveness changes everything: it is not a refusal to meet their needs, nor ill will. All at once, the way relational phenomena are read shifts — in a couple, in a family, in an institution as much as in a company. Ceasing to expect from someone what they are not in a position to provide is already an enormous gain in the judgement we pass on their behaviour. The more we understand others, the more capable we become of building healthy relationships with them.

This conceptualisation is taken further by a typology of the forms of violence — aggression-violence, punishment-violence, and punishment-violence with latent symmetry — and by the stages of internalisation of the law: two valuable tools for understanding as well as for intervening with people caught in violent interactions. It is this same grid that informs the reading of violence and sexual abuse within the family.