Organizational Dysfunction

Type
Punisher's threat
Self-punisher's
threat
Sufferer's threat
Tantalizer's threat
Examples
Eat the food I cooked for you or I'll hurt you.
Eat the food I cooked for you or I'll hurt myself.
Eat the food I cooked for you. I was saving it for myself. I wonder what will
happen now?
Eat the food I cooked for you and you just may get a really yummy dessert.
There are different levels of demands - demands that are of little consequence,
demands that involve important issues or personal integrity, demands that affect major
life decisions, and/or demands that are dangerous or illegal.
Silent Treatment
The silent treatment is sometimes used as a control mechanism. When so used, it
constitutes a passive-aggressive action characterized by the coupling of nonverbal but
nonetheless unambiguous indications of the presence of negative emotion with the
refusal to discuss the scenario triggering those emotions and, when those emotions'
source is unclear to the other party, occasionally the refusal to clarify it or even to
identify that source at all. As a result, the perpetrator of the silent treatment denies the
victim both the opportunity to negotiate an after-the-fact settlement of the grievance in
question and the ability to modify his/her future behavior to avoid giving further offense.
In especially severe cases, even if the victim gives in and accedes to the perpetrator's
initial demands, the perpetrator may continue the silent treatment so as to deny the
victim feedback indicating that those demands have been satisfied. The silent treatment
thereby enables its perpetrator to cause hurt, obtain ongoing attention in the form of
repeated attempts by the victim to restore dialogue, maintain a position of power
through creating uncertainty over how long the verbal silence and associated
impossibility of resolution will last, and derive the satisfaction that the perpetrator
associates with each of these consequences.
Love Bombing
The expression has been used to describe the tactics used by pimps and gang
members to control their victims, as well as to describe the behavior of an
abusive narcissist who tries to win the confidence of a victim.
Mind Games
One sense of mind games is a largely conscious struggle for psychological oneupmanship,
often employing passive–aggressive behavior to specifically demoralize or
dis-empower the thinking subject, making the aggressor look superior; also referred to
as "power games".
In intimate relationships, mind games can be used to undermine one partner's belief in
the validity of their own perceptions. Personal experience may be denied and driven
Page 75 of 155