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Wednesday, November 17, 2004When and if they do get therapy, psychiatrists say, people with strong passive-aggressive instincts are usually determined to fail: the therapist becomes the scorned authority figure. The patients will take their medications and then report with relish that they don't work. The patients will follow advice and then complain that it is senseless, useless. "They are not doing this on purpose; it's part of a deep-seated ambivalence about getting better," a determination to expose the authority as incompetent, said Dr. Marjorie Klein, a psychiatrist at the University of Wisconsin. And I bet this will sound familiar to a lot of people: The marriage seemed to come loose at the seams, one stitch at a time, often during the evening hour between work and dinner. She would be preparing the meal, while he kept her company in the sun room next to kitchen, usually reading the paper. At times the two would provoke each other, as couples do - about money, about holiday plans - but those exchanges often flared out quickly when he would say, simply, "O.K., you're right," and turn back to the news. "Looking back, instead of getting angry, I was doing this as a dismissive way of shutting down the conversation," said Peter G. Hill, 48, a doctor in Massachusetts who has recently separated from his wife. Even reading the paper at that hour was his way of adamantly relaxing, in defiance of whatever it was she thought he should be doing. "It takes two to break up, but I have been accused of being passive-aggressive, and there it is," he said. I've done some things that are passive-aggressive in my time, such as giving a tie I knew to be ugly as a gift. But, I'm relieved to discover, it's no longer considered a personality disorder. Does that mean it's now considered acceptable behavior? posted by Sydney on 11/17/2004 07:41:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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