How Is The Personality Of An Aggressor Built?

There are many damages and deaths that occur as a result of an attack, hence it is important to continue investigating in this regard. Thus, understanding how violence occurs in a relationship – and in other areas – implies knowing how the personality of an aggressor is constructed and what his or her experience in that relationship may be.

Research data shows that being the object or witness of violence does not necessarily make that witness violent in the future. However, studies also tell us that a large part of the aggressors do have a history of family violence (54%), which justifies psychological intervention.

The personality of an aggressor begins in childhood and adolescence

Attachment refers to the way we connect with the world and especially with affective figures. From a young age, in the face of any threat, our attachment system is activated. That is to say, in the face of fear, we seek that feeling of security that the company of our reference figures offers us.

On the other hand, if faced with the threat, the body maintains activation for a long period, it is likely that that energy ends up transforming into aggressiveness. Here violence has the function of attracting the attention of the reference figure to give help.

It seems that especially the borderline and antisocial aggressors have an insecure attachment that characterizes their way of bonding, especially with their affective figures. When this type of insecure attachment is coupled with exposure to violence, humiliation and detachment, it generates the development of a personality disorder and violent behaviors.

According to Dutton (2003, 2007) the result of this conglomerate is a “fuzzy identity”. In these cases, violence and emotional distancing feed off each other in a vicious circle that destroys the relationship.

What is the background of the aggressors?

As we well know, experiences with our reference figures are decisive in our personality. According to Dutton (2003), there are different antecedents regarding the aggressors’ family experiences and the psychological and physical consequences that they produced in them:

• Rejection and humiliation: low self-esteem, anger / rage, blame external factors, lack of affective regulation … They tend to be violent frequently and emotionally mistreat.
• Insecure attachment: they are very jealous, anger becomes intimate and they want to control.
• Victim and / or witness of physical abuse: they have memories of patterns of violence, they do not have positive strategies to solve problems, low empathy for victims of violence … They tend to abuse.

• Rejection, humiliation; insecure attachment: violence focuses on intimate relationships.
• Rejection, humiliation; insecure attachment; victim and / or witness of physical abuse:  the integrity of their ego depends on the relationship, so they are controlling, mistreating and persecuting.

The fear of the perpetrator (aggressor) to be abandoned is what causes his need to control and harm the victim. When the aggressor engages in aggressive behaviors with caring behaviors, in some way the latter reinforce the approach of the victim, creating a type of relationship known as “traumatic bond” or “Stockholm syndrome” (Graham et al., 2001; Loue, 2002).

The role of values ​​in violence

The insecurely attached young person develops a consistent value system that justifies their vision of the world, and therefore their relationships with their partners. These values ​​are transmitted through socialization, from the family, peer group, school, movies, etc. We live values, not only of the microculture in which one is born, but also in global culture. The main values ​​related to gender violence would be the following (developed from Pence and Paymar, 1993; Paymar, 2000; Loue, 2002):

• Male superiority: the myth of the superman, the man as provider, tolerance with the promiscuity of the man and control of the partner, the right to demand domestic services from his partner, etc.
• Way of understanding violence: bad mood causes violence, men are jealous by nature, breaking things is not aggression, sometimes there are no alternatives, the man cannot change his partner if his partner does not change, etc.
• Conception of women:  women are manipulative, they see men as sources of money, feminists hate men, they like to be dominated, they are as violent as men, etc.

6 explanations that aggressors give themselves to resort to domestic violence

According to Holma et al. (2006) there are six recurring justifications used by offenders to justify violence. They would be the following :

• Violence is natural.
• Violence is related to certain inadequacies of the aggressor for difficult situations.
• Being cornered.
• The couple pissed them off.
• Losing control temporarily.
• Justify yourself through your traumatic past, accumulation of stress, etc.

It is important to keep in mind that it is not about winning a battle against the aggressor, but about going for yourself. Any type of violence subtracts and deteriorates, that is why a large part of the work with victims of violence focuses on adding and recovering, that is, accumulating evidence and experiences that reinforce the recovery of confidence in one’s own criteria and self-esteem, until reaching that feeling of freedom that gives the feeling of control.

Bibliographic references

Navarro Góngora, J. (2015). Violence in intimate relationships . A clinical perspective. Barcelona: Ed. Herder.