However, he is a clear example of a passive-aggressive personality.

In a word, passive-aggressive personalities manipulate others through their very passivity.

For example, if the boss requests a project, the passive-aggressive personality will not resist directly.

In personal relationships, the passive-aggressive personality resists demands through passive means.

Typically, passive-aggressive personalities complain to others about the demands that higher-ups make of them.

One psychiatrist diagnosed him as having a passive-aggressive personality with paraphilia and pedophilia.

Passive-Aggressive Personalities.

"A classic passive-aggressive personality.

The poet Walt Whitman made out better than some, though the report noted "traits of borderline narcissistic and passive-aggressive personality disorders."

The most common maneuvers of a passive-aggressive personality are procrastination, dawdling, stubbornness, intentional inefficiency, and forgetfulness.

Her incessant barbs, signifying repression or retaliation, illuminate the conscious and unconscious maneuvers of a passive-aggressive personality.

Dr. Gerald O'Brien, a psychiatrist, diagnosed him with suffering from a severe passive-aggressive personality disorder.

These experts make a distinction between passive-aggressive behavior, which most people display at times, and passive-aggressive personality, which is ingrained and habitual.

It also restores others that were dropped from recent editions of the D.S.M., like sadistic, masochistic and passive-aggressive personality patterns.

In contrast, the poet Whitman received only two penalty points from Dr. Post for "traits of borderline narcissistic and passive-aggressive personality disorders."

According to DSM-IV, passive-aggressive personality disorder is "often overtly ambivalent, wavering indecisively from one course of action to its opposite.

Ultimately, of course, the passive-aggressive personality will manipulate others into making fewer and fewer demands of him because the emotional cost of relying on such an individual is too great.

Although passive-aggressive personality no longer appears in the DSM-IV as a diagnosable disorder, individuals who display the traits of this personality type can be highly manipulative.

By not doing what is required of them or by seemingly complying with requests that are then sabotaged through passive resistance, the passive-aggressive personality manipulates others by evoking frustration and hostility.

Among those controversially considered by the official committees of the diagnostic manuals include self-defeating personality disorder, sadistic personality disorder, passive-aggressive personality disorder and premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

They were dropped in the DSM-IV, though a proposed 'depressive personality disorder' was added; in addition, the official diagnosis of passive-aggressive personality disorder was dropped, tentatively renamed 'negativistic personality disorder.'

But Dinkins's passive-aggressive personality has spelled trouble for him in the relentless spotlight of the mayoralty, where his job is not just to take positions but to make his positions come true by moving a bureaucracy of a quarter million people and rallying a city of more than seven million souls.