Daniel A. Bochner, Ph.D.

Bullying is awful. Just hearing the word twists our stomachs, doesn’t it? Certainly there have been significant efforts to put a stop to bullying. Yet it seems to be a stubborn problem stemming from developmental processes in children as well as the nature of society. Bullying is sometimes significantly reduced by school and community administrators who successfully create a culture among our kids that views intimidation as "uncool," but such an accomplishment is relatively rare and requires significant parental involvement. Successfully preventing the desire to bully within the bully himself, presents a more complex issue due to difficulty in truly understanding the bully. The most frustrating part of the puzzle by far, however, is that the suggestions for the victims of bullying are quite often almost useless. So lets look at each of these areas one by one to see if it’s possible to get a better handle on the problem (for the remainder of this article, bullies, victims, and administrators will be referred to in the male form for the purpose of clarity).

The first thing to understand about bullying is that it stems from a natural human desire for dominance. Dominance is built into us as animals, as is the need to work with one another because communal efforts lead to cultural development and all sorts of progress. We need leaders and we need workers, and that’s just the way it is. In many ways we do our best to level these traits in our children when they’re very young. On the one hand, we want our children to get along with other kids and, for example, be good sharers. On the other hand, however, we teach our children to compete and we want them to have a desire to win. Is there really any parent who wouldn’t want their child to be a "leader" among his friends? We do know, however, that there are many ways to be a leader, and many of them are not very good. We want our children to lead from the front with good judgment and good influence on their peers, but certainly there are many children who are leading from the rear, trying to get other kids to do things that are unsafe or bad for them. Many bullies intimidate and demean others for the express purpose of leading, and entertaining other kids, in a negative direction. But the desire to bully always comes back to the common and natural human desire to dominate.

The need to dominate in a bullying fashion, that is the need to intimidate others, essentially comes from poorly balanced character or lack of integrity within one’s personality (please see article, The Power and Control Addiction). This absence of balance and integrity can come from a variety of factors, including inborn intensity combined with relatively minor difficulties at home, or very bad problems at home which manifest in poor balance of character regardless of the genetic level of intensity. Sometimes there exists within an individual a significant inborn intensity combined with very bad problems at home. Such a combination leads to the most vicious kind of bullies. The problem is even worse when a child is born with significantly good social ability...

For the complete article, please buy The Emotional Toolbox book.