Coercive Personalities & Criminality

For a variety of economic and cultural reasons, humans, on relatively rare occasions, commit acts that are perceived as criminal.  But even more rarely, an individual commits a crime not primarily to achieve financial advantage or to counter perceived inequality, but, rather, primarily as an attempt to exert control over another.

A person so obsessed with control as this is, actually, also only rarely moved to commit criminal (and, even much more rarely, violent) acts.  However, when such an individual does cross that statistically extreme line, it is after an often long journey on the path of coercive objectification.

So we must ask:  Why do some people repeatedly subordinate the autonomy, agency, and well-being of others to their own desires?

Human beings have struggled with this question for centuries. Psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, theologians, and laypeople have all attempted to understand those few who habitually manipulate, dominate, exploit, deceive, abuse, or commit violence.

Many explanations have been proposed. Some emphasize trauma. Others emphasize attachment difficulties, personality traits, neurobiology, social learning, ideology, or cultural influences. Each may contribute something to our understanding.

Yet an important mystery remains. Because  many people experience trauma without becoming coercive. Many people suffer humiliation without becoming controlling. Many people endure rejection without concluding that domination is necessary.

Why, then, do some individuals come to organize their lives around control?

From a Dyadic perspective, the central issue may not be aggression, empathy, or morality alone.

It may be the failure to develop shared agency.

Shared Agency

Healthy human development gradually teaches two important truths.

The first is:

I am a center of agency. I have preferences. I make choices. I have needs, values, goals, and desires.

This realization is essential for healthy development. But development requires a second realization as well:

You are also a center of agency.  You are not merely an obstacle, a possession, a role, or an instrument. You possess your own interiority. Your choices matter. Your autonomy is real.

And eventually, healthy development reaches a key realization about these truths:

Your agency and mine can coexist, and very likely cohere.

This is the foundation of cooperation, intimacy, friendship, trust, and community. But the coercive personality may never fully arrive at this final realization.

A Different Orientation

If shared agency does not develop successfully, one's social world may begin to appear very different from that of the vast majority of others.

The person may come to believe:

Either I control, or I am controlled.

Relationships become contests. Trust becomes weakness. Love becomes manipulation. Generosity becomes hidden self-interest. Vulnerability becomes danger. Cooperation becomes submission. The freedom of others becomes threatening rather than enriching.

From this perspective, domination does not necessarily appear cruel. It appears necessary.  And inevitable.

Developmental Arrest

From a Dyadic perspective, coercive personalities may represent a form of arrested relational development.

Human beings ordinarily develop through stages of participation, often in this order, from infancy to elderhood:  Presence, Reciprocity, Symbolization, Exploration, Governance, Control, Acceptance, Generativity, and Dyadic Participation. (See button link below for more on this topic.)

Control is a necessary developmental stage that usually occurs during adolescence.

In this stage, every human must learn:

- how to protect themselves,
- how to establish boundaries,
- how to preserve autonomy,
- how to resist coercion.

And with protection of self or other, specifically, they must learn:

- when protection of self or other is truly necessary,
- how to respond to threats proportionally,
- how to know when a threat is neutralize so the protective action can cease
- how to recover from committing the coercive acts that had been required to achieve protection of self or other.

But a few individuals become trapped in the Control phase, never mastering its lessons. Control ceases to be a tool. It becomes an orientation.

The person no longer asks:

How do I participate wisely?

Instead they ask:

How do I becomr invulnerable?

or:

How do I maintain control?

The developmental journey constricts, continuing in a maladaptive and dysfunctional direction.

 
Manifestations

Coercive objectification may appear in many forms. Some individuals rely primarily upon:

- deception,
- emotional manipulation,
- intimidation,
- guilt,
- emotional domination,
- social pressure.

Others may:

- exploit people financially,
- engage in chronic dishonesty,
- violate boundaries repeatedly,
- manipulate institutions,
- exploit relationships for personal gain.

Some may become criminal.

A few may become violent.

But violence is not the defining feature of a controlling orientation. Violence is one possible expression of a deeper relational problem. The core issue is persistent inability or unwillingness to recognize others as coequal centers of agency.

It merits noting here that the reason a non-criminal coercive person becomes criminal or violent is unknown, and perhaps the reason cannot be known.  It may simply be that, because coercive criminality and violence are possible, some small number of humans will particpate in such activity.  This does not remove culpability from an indivdual offender; it merely acknowledges a statistical reality. And, to be clear, indivdual offenders are culpable because, whatever else they suffer, they know the difference between right and wrong; they know what coercion they would not tolerate against themselves, so they know what coercion others would not tolerate.

Why Control Becomes Attractive

Control is not always born from cruelty. Sometimes it is born from fear. The individual may have learned:

- vulnerability is dangerous,
- trust leads to betrayal,
- dependence invites humiliation,
- love is conditional,
- openness invites exploitation.

If these assumptions become deeply ingrained, control may begin to feel like safety. Not healthy safety. Not genuine security. But the only safety the person believes exists.

The tragedy is that the strategies intended to protect the person often become the source of profound loneliness. The individual may become highly skilled at influencing others while remaining unable to participate fully with them.

The Cost of Objectification

When another person is treated primarily as an object, several things are lost simultaneously.

The other's:

- autonomy,
- dignity,
- subjectivity,
- unpredictability,
- freedom.

But something is also lost within the coercive person. They lose:

- genuine intimacy,
- mutual trust,
- shared joy,
- authentic vulnerability,
- the possibility of cooperative flourishing.

Control can produce compliance. It cannot produce mutuality.

The Possibility of Change

If the problem is developmental, then change may remain possible.

Recovery does not mean:

- surrendering agency,
- becoming passive,
- abandoning boundaries,
- eliminating autonomy.

Instead, recovery involves discovering:

My agency and your agency can coexist, and very likely cohere.

This may involve:

- learning to trust,
- tolerating uncertainty,
- accepting vulnerability,
- developing mutual (not just operational) empathy,
- experiencing cooperation as safe,
- reorganizing deeply held beliefs about self and others.

The goal is not self-erasure. It is mutual agency.

A Dyadic Perspective

The healthy person does not seek domination. Nor do they seek submission. They seek participation. They understand:

I matter.

You matter.

The relationship matters.

None must disappear for the others to exist. This is the essence of shared agency.

And perhaps this is the deepest tragedy of coercive personalities, not that they desire agency too strongly, but that they grant it only to themselves.

Conclusion

Human beings are born vulnerable. Most learn that vulnerability can coexist with trust. Most learn that openness can coexist with safety. Most discover that freedom is not a solitary achievement, but a shared condition.

A few never fully make this discovery. Their lives become organized around control.

But if coercive objectification is a developmental failure rather than an immutable identity, then hope remains. Healing begins the moment another center of being is allowed to remain fully real.

This is the Dyadic hope.

Not domination.

Not submission.

Participation.