Celivia: "basically, the person is an emotional and social cripple and should seek help."

Couldn't agree more, but if the person is merely aggressive, rather than actually threatening or carrying out threats, should another person's response be enough to have him taken down to Plod's lockup? He may merely be a socially-disadvantaged loner or have an unfortunate manner. What if "he" were a wasp-tongued woman who makes the life of her victim hell with snide remarks or nasty comments? Should the police lock her up too? Where is the line drawn? If her victim responds aggressively and she becomes afraid, who is the victim?

Romany:"a self-expressive drive to mastery."

And that is a bad thing how?

Vanilla, you've got to the crux of the matter, as you often do. the law exists in the way it does so that differing points of view can be expressed and defended for the purpose of allowing someone to work out the right of it. The reason for the dispute is a pretty important part of that, which some here would like to have abolished in favour of a Police-State solution.

Funny how some people are so keen to lock everyone ELSE up...

Antiseptic -

Hope you are not including me amongst the people who want people locked up and police nannying us? That goes against everything I believe in or have ever striven for.

I believe, however, that we might have a semantic problem here - we attach different meanings to the word aggressive? That's why I provided both the dictionary and medically literal meaning of the word...and there is still nothing on the gods' green earth that would convince me that aggression by those definitions is acceptable.

However, you write "but if the person is MERELY aggressive, rather than actually threatening or carrying out threats, should another person's response be enough to have him(sic) taken down to Plod's lockup...? (My caps.)

Aggressive behaviour IS threatening, so clearly you mean something else by the word aggressive, I think? We would then appear to be arguing at cross purposes.

As to what is wrong with a drive to mastery? Mugabe, Pol Pot et. al. are the clearest indications of what a drive to master the world - or one's own small part of it - leads to, surely?

Why is the bloke swearing at her? is he? a 73 year old lady called the police because her neighbors tree was shaking at her.
Every time the wind blew she rang the police, every time.
Cop advised her to take out an AVO, yes true she did!
It was given.
Even police surprised by it but it was given.
She needed help but the neighbor? swore his head of and cut down the tree.
Comrade Gibo the cop was a born again Christian, I still know him, and both sides of my story.
He had one mate in the force, met him every morning as he shaved.
He is now a minister of a church like yours.
Police get calls to stop kids being kids sometimes we ask too much of them.

Romany: "a semantic problem"

I don't. I'm specifically differentiating an aggressive attitude from physical aggression or threats. One may be aggressive without being bellicose. I suspect that many people on forums I contribute to would characterise me as an aggressive poster, for example, but I rarely resort to personal abuse.

A little anecdote: soem time ago, my ex-wife decided that she needed more child support money from me and that the best way to get it was to get the Courts to give her more custody and me less. As part of that process she asked for a DVO, which I disputed (aggressively), finally agreeing to the nasty little lie-sheet because the matter was distracting from the real issue of custody, which I also contested (aggressively). During that period, I became a very angry man, which I and a couple of psychiatrists I saw reckoned was pretty understandable. Now, the point of all that? the turning point in the case came when her lawyer said to me during his examination when I raised my voice "You're a very angry and aggressive man" and I replied "Yes, I am, but never out of control". He literally slumped and suggested that he wished to talk to his client, after which he came back and agreed to the terms we had discussed, which was 50:50 care. The point being that my ex claiming she was fearful was unable to be backed up with a demonstrated reason for that fear, whereas I could easily demonstrate that despite nearly 12 months of anger and aggression, she had suffered no threat or injury from me, so I was clearly not uncontrolled.

Now, let me ask a question: during that whole process, my ex-wife never raised her voice (I did and sometimes still do thinking about it) and she had a lawyer doing all the work, yet she made a great threat against me and my children that caused me a great deal of distress and fear. Was she being "aggressive"? If so, should Plod have carried her off to the cells, if not, why not?

cont...

Romany: "Aggressive behaviour IS threatening,"

No, that was my point: it may be perceived by others as threatening, which is not the same thing and those others' response should not, in the absence of evidence of genuine threat, be enough for the police to act. At most they should appear to warn ALL concerned against escalation.

I note that the shallow end of the discussion pool seems to have gone quiet on this one now. Funny how some don't like being asked to actually think while their knee is jerking.

Romany: "Mugabe, Pol Pot et. al. are the clearest indications of what a drive to master the world - or one's own small part of it - leads to, surely?"

I'd have thought that Shakepeare, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, Nicklaus, Fangio, Churchill, Franklin, et al were the clearest exemplars of what a drive to master a field can achieve. The examples you provided are sociopathic at best, which is hardly relevant. The fact is that aggressively competing and disputing is what has lead to the current high state of our culture. Aggression is one side of the common "fight or flight" response in humans which must be accommodated. "Flight" or fear is the other side and must also be accommodated, which is the balancing act that must always take place if one wants a decent society.

Steel, you mention sport but my question is why, if being verbally aggressive is so normal and acceptable, are players sent off the field when they are verbally aggressive toward the referee or coach?

Antiseptic, it can be hard to draw the line between verbal aggression and miscommunication.
To anwer the topic question, no I don’t think that verbal aggression should be a reason to lock someone up but if there are serious threats made which caused the victim to be scared for their safety, then I'd say getting an AVO is not unreasonable.

Everyone is responsible for their own actions and words, no matter how much the other person frustrates us. Nobody is responsible for other people's aggressive behaviour.

I was browsing at a jewellery store a while ago where a young shop assistant was on her own and a male customer loudly threatened her with these words, “Make sure you don’t run into me in the street because I’ll take your head of your shoulders!” All because he lost some of his deposit when he cancelled his lay-by.

If I’d been that assistant I’d have pushed the security button- even though I'm not easily intimidated, if verbally aggressive people continue to get away with threats they think it’s acceptable. There should be a consequence for threatening others.
The young shop assistant was upset and frightened so I stayed with her till her manager came back.

If there are no threats involved I suppose there is not much that can be done, we have to learn to deal with verbal aggression and other people's bad behaviour best we can because we can’t make others to behave in a certain way.

Then again, I’m not sure whether I’d class non-threatening language as verbal aggression. Just strongly expressing an opinion without the intent to hurt someone would, IMO not be verbal aggression.