Internal & External Aggression

I have written before about two classifications that I use to help me understand aggressive and violent incidents I may have to deal with. One of the first questions I ask when dealing with violence is, whether the incident is a premeditated or spontaneous one. Premeditated events are those such as muggings/street robberies, where the individual has planned to use violence or the threat of violence to accomplish a goal (such as acquiring money/possessions), with Spontaneous incidents being those where an individual had no initial plan/desire to engage in an aggressive act, but due to something happening in their environment e.g., somebody saying something to them, acting towards them in some way (either deliberately or inadvertently), they have become aggressive and potentially violent. The real differentiation between these two types of violence is that in premeditated situations there are defined goals and expected outcomes, whereas with spontaneous incidents there aren’t e.g., if you’ve spilt a drink over somebody, what does the person expect of you to make it right? This simple classification system, allows me to consider whether verbal de-escalation is an option – such as in a spontaneous situation, where there are no goals, and a non-violent solution/outcome can be sought – or whether I should acquiesce to a premediated demand, such as a request from a mugger for my wallet (what they are expecting to achieve out of the interaction), or use resistance/enforcement against a “would be” sexual assailant (another premeditated incident) etc. Another useful way, that builds on this classification system, is to categorize aggression/violence as being internally or externally motivated. This allows for dispositional factors to be considered e.g., is an individual predisposed to use violence, or are they someone who has become “reluctantly” aggressive due to a perceived injustice they feel needs to be made right etc.

Certain predatory individuals, such as rapists and sexual assailants, will try to make the argument that their motivation(s) to offend was due to external factors, rather than because of internal urges and desires. The “external” reasons, often become the foundation for rape myths e.g., a sexual predator only committed their assault because of the provocative clothing that the person they victimized was wearing etc., or that the signals they were being given were misleading etc. By blaming external factors, a sexual predator can downplay and deflect from the fact that their actions/assaults were the product of their own private dark fantasies and were 100% internally motivated. Sometimes the blaming of external factors is a little more subtle, such as trying to make the case that their “abnormal” behavior was solely due to the effects of alcohol and/or drugs i.e., something – external - made them behave/act in the way that they did. One of the reasons why it is important to understand the degree and extent of internal motivations to offend, is that if somebody is internally driven, and has a premeditated goal in mind, verbal de-escalation and conflict resolution are unlikely to be successful. An internally-driven sexual offender might try and claim that revealing clothing – and other external factors – are what prompt and cause them to offend, however we know that this isn’t the case. Many child molesters (as opposed to pedophiles), who are engaged in adult heterosexual relationships, will argue that the reason they started to sexually target children was down to “stress” e.g., they lost their job, had financial troubles etc., however this blaming of external factors falls far short of explaining their actions. Like all sexual predators, their actions are down to internal factors and motivation(s), such as the need to enjoy and exhibit power and control and dispense internal angers and frustrations. An external stressor such as losing a job, may precipitate this type of sexual offending, however it is clearly not what motivates it – that again is down to dark and exploratory fantasies.

True external motivators for aggression and violence, are usually “unexpected” occurrences that happen to individuals, such as somebody waiting for a parking space, only to have someone else come along and take it before they can begin to move into it, or if somebody goes out for the night only to have someone spill a drink over them in a bar etc. These are unexpected “external” events, over which the individual has no control, and if they hadn’t occurred, they wouldn’t have become aggressive and potentially violent. However, different people have different types and levels of response; some individuals may become mildly annoyed at losing a parking space they believe they were entitled to, whereas others may explode in a fit of rage, and start attacking and vandalizing the other person’s car etc. Some people are internally motivated/wired to use aggression and violence as a tool for dealing with spontaneous - external - events and this should always be a consideration, when we try and assess if verbal de-escalation would be an effective strategy. Some people lack emotional self-regulation, whilst others lack the ability to successfully resolve disputes verbally or have found that using violence – or the threat of violence – in the past has got them what they wanted; so why try another strategy etc. By understanding the “degree” to which an external factor causes somebody to become aggressive, and how much internal motivations play a part, we can start to assess where verbal de-escalation may be a successful strategy to employ and where it is not. An external event, such as losing a parking space, may simply be the straw that broke the camel’s back, unleashing a flood of internally motivated anger.

By adding other categorizations and classifications of aggressive and violent behavior(s), it is possible to build a more multi-dimensional picture of aggression/violence. One way to graphically/visually do this is to create a graph, with two axis that creates four quadrants. The x-Axis (the horizontal one) has “No Goals” at the leftmost end, and “Goals” at the right, with the y-Axis (the vertical one), showing “External Factors” at the bottom, and “Internal Factors” at the top. Incidents which are highly internally motivated, and have clear and specific goals, such as sexual assaults, sit in the top right corner. Such events are unlikely to be verbally de-escalated. However, incidents which sit in the utmost bottom left corner, which are largely externally motivated, and have no goals/expected outcomes, generally respond well to verbal de-escalation techniques. By plotting different types of potential violent encounters in this way, we can start to understand the different de-escalation methods and approaches that might be successful.