Hi Junebug. :)
Muttly, I'm not sure, of course and as blackemrald said people have different thoughts on the matter. I have been a little obsessed with these questions in the past. This and empathy. I have no doubt there is some inherent stuff but after speaking to people and asking them their thoughts about anger, aggression and so many other things it became apparent to me that the values people give to certain actions or emotions influences how they behave.
My sister is a qualified psychologist, has admitted narcissistic traits and has done a lot of work on herself. We have discussed actions behaviours and emotions at length. I have done the same with people I have met on line with various behaviours. She described feelings of power and satisfaction followed by momentary or longer lasting shame in response to her aggressive outbursts aimed at others. Seeing the shock in the persons face, the distress and the humiliation brought her satisfaction and momentarily alleviated her feelings of powerlessness and fear. Then she would feel shame. She equated aggression with power and "niceness" with weakness. Vulnerability to harm. Same family and similar background with some differences but I most of all valued power over myself not others. Self control and not control of others. I most of all did not want to harm others. It was in the front of my mind. I responded to that fear by dissociating rather than acing out aggression. A choice of freeze rather than fight. Why? I guess a whole lot of things could be possible but some of it was about chance interpretation of the present and sub or conscious decisions about who we wanted to be and how we should protect ourselves.
She started to change when she was able to see the cost of behaving as she did and after a couple of big life events happened related to this in her life. And after a whole lot of therapy and me being harshly truthful with her and telling her how I saw it affecting her. She of course wasn't that badly affected, has the capacity for introspection etc and actually does have empathy skills so a lot of people wouldn't have been able to do what she has done. Its a credit to her.
I think many aggressive people perceive aggression as power and kindness as weakness. I think many kind acting people want to act in this way as a priority. There are all sorts of in between areas and subtleties here too.
I personally found Pete Walkers the 4 F's article informative and it helped my sister too.
We had a father who was probably a clinical NPD with borderline traits and a mother with passive aggressive and narcissistic traits. My sister looked at my father and although she hated and feared him she said she saw him as being powerful and wanted to emulate that. She remembers being young and thinking along those lines. I looked at him and was revolted. My prime drive was to be opposite to him in any way possible. The mother stuff fried my brain and has taken most of my life to manage and untangle. It stills has it on a not that gentle sizzle. I know people bandy around NPD left right and centre but I actually do have some clinical input for this in my family and not just my sister.
The other interesting research I read was to do with psychopaths and empathy. Proof that most could "switch" off and on empathy in certain situations. That made a fair amount of sense to me in context of my life. I am a believer in peoples motivations and the effect it has on their behaviour. In context of many other factors of course. And I don't necessarily judge those "decisions" as I think human beings fall into certain ways of being or perceiving for many reasons and sometimes purely by chance.
