…I’m Passive-Aggressive. “…(W)hile ‘passive-aggressive’ has become a workhorse phrase in marriage counseling and an all-purpose label for almost any difficult character, it is a controversial concept in psychiatry.” (New York Times) Dropped from the latest iteration of the ‘official bible’ of diagnoses in psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-IV, because it is too common, too diffuse, to narrow, too variable, etc. etc., those who examine passive-aggressive behavior are divided even about the basics — is it immature or quite adaptive, in other words is it good or bad? It is worth noting that one of the sources for the terminology was the military, denoting a sort of passive obstructionism to discipline and demands noticed during World War II. Passive aggression, as I see it, forms the centerpiece of resistance to arbitrary and illegitimate authority, either in the political or the interpersonal sphere, in situations where outright defiance cannot be afforded. I often worry that our society is anger-averse, and all vociferous differences of opinion are labelled unreasonable and those who express them considered aggressors. This has several consequences — passive compliance; the aforementioned passive aggression; a widespread confusion between anger, which is a vehement expression of one’s wish that another change, and rage, which is undirected raw emotion waiting to attach to a target in order to be released; and outbursts of virulent rage, such as the euphemistic “going postal” and increasingly common incidents of deadly assaults in the workplace, malls and schools. Not to mention the likelihood that the American public will be rolling over and taking whatever the Bush administration dishes out for the next four years.