Passive Aggression as Indirect-Hostility Wrong Attractor: The Denied Anger Architecture and the Return to Direct Expression

This paper applies the Displacement Framework to passive aggression, analysing it as a wrong-attractor state in which the displacement cost of direct anger expression is elevated — due to fear of consequences, anger prohibition, or power asymmetry — displacing hostility into indirect channels that maintain plausible deniability. Using displacement cost D(ξ), accumulated displacement Φ, and basin geometry, we show how the wrong attractor self-maintains because indirect hostility is less risky than direct confrontation but sufficient to discharge affective pressure.

Nine propositions formalise the anger-denial mechanism, plausible deniability architecture, relational accumulation costs, origins in authoritarian family systems, and return paths through assertiveness training and direct conflict tolerance. Published as part of The Phronesis Issues preprint series.