DEFINITION:
The phrase “passive-aggressive personality disorder (PAPD)” (also known as “negative personality disorder”) refers to a mental illness characterized by procrastination, stubbornness, inefficiency, and covert obstructionism.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV), published in 1994, describes the condition as a “pervasive pattern of negativistic attitudes and passive resistance to demands for adequate performance.”
ETYMOLOGY:
It appears that the phrase PAPD was introduced during World War II by the US military to describe soldiers who failed—without explicitly refusing—to carry out orders or were covertly obstructive in the way they did so.
The English adjective “passive” is attested from the fourteenth century. The related noun “passion” derives, via Middle English and Old French, from Late Latin noun passio, passionis, meaning “being acted upon” or “suffering.” The Late Latin noun, in turn, derives from the Classical Latin past participle passus of the deponent verb, patior, pati, meaning “to undergo” or “to suffer.”
The English adjective “aggressive” is attested from the early nineteenth century, whereas the related noun “aggression” is attested from the early seventeenth century. The latter word derives from the Classical Latin past participle adgressus of the deponent verb, adgredior, adgredi, meaning “to go to,” “to approach,” or “to attack.”
For the etymology of the term “personality,” see the Glossary entry, personality.
For the etymology of the term “disorder,” see the Glossary entry, borderline personality disorder.
DISCUSSION:
The category of PAPD was deleted from the DSM-5, published in 2013. However, seeing that the phrase “passive-aggressive” has passed into everyday speech, it remains worth describing PAPD here.
The etiology of PAPD is usually ascribed to environmental/developmental factors experienced during childhood. Specific factors that have been proposed include parental substance abuse and addiction; physical, emotional, or sexual abuse by parents or other adults; and bullying by other children.
The theory is that in such circumstances children feel helpless and unable to defend themselves or express their feelings openly. For this reason, they develop ways of protecting themselves as well as they can without being openly defiant and receiving censure or punishment.
The inability to express one’s anger, frustration, and other negative feelings openly in childhood may lead in later life to difficulty being properly assertive or a failure to develop necessary coping skills or a capacity for self-expression.
The upshot of this analysis is that such personality deficits developed in childhood lead to the development of full-blown PAPD in adulthood. One textbook explains that PAPD patients harbor “vindictive intent” beneath a “seductive veneer.”
DSM-IV maintains that patientswith PAPD are “often overtly ambivalent, wavering indecisively from one course of action to its opposite. They may follow an erratic path that causes endless wrangles with others and disappointment for themselves.”
The DSM-IV further characterizes PAPD sufferers as experiencing an “intense conflict between dependence on others and the desire for self-assertion.”
In short, while PAPD patients may exhibit self-confidence or even bravado on the surface, their underlying self-image and self-confidence are in fact quite fragile.