Aggression

Aggression is overt, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other unpleasantness upon another individual. People may intentionally use aggression to control or bully other people, or as a result of poor self awareness and impulse control, be completely unconscious of their aggression towards others. Aggression is a potent pre-cursor to violence, and as such great thoughtfulness to discipline aggression is needed to develop Consciousness and practice the Law of One.

Aggression may occur either in retaliation or without provocation. In humans, frustration due to blocked goals can cause aggression. Submissiveness may be viewed as the opposite of aggressiveness.

Aggression can take a variety of forms, which may be expressed physically, or communicated verbally or non-verbally: including anti-predator aggression, defensive aggression (fear-induced), predatory aggression, dominance aggression, inter-male aggression, resident-intruder aggression, maternal aggression, species-specific aggression, sex-related aggression, territorial aggression, isolation-induced aggression, irritable aggression, and brain-stimulation-induced aggression (hypothalamus). There are two subtypes of human aggression: (1) controlled-instrumental subtype (purposeful or goal-oriented); and (2) reactive-impulsive subtype (often elicits uncontrollable actions that are inappropriate or undesirable). Aggression differs from what is commonly called assertiveness, although the terms are often used interchangeably among laypeople (as in phrases such as "an aggressive salesperson")

See Also

Negative Ego

Victim-Victimizer