A colleague, and friend of mine in the US, Dr John D Byrnes (PhD), wrote the following in his book “Before Conflict”:
“The more I studied the phenomenon of violence and its precursors, the more I realized that the word “violence” causes us to miss the mark. It generates a reactive response to a problem requiring a preventative approach.
Notice that I did not say proactive. One can be proactively reactive and that is not acceptable. We must prevent! ...........
Accordingly, I began to categorize this spectrum of anger with the term aggression.
As a much more encompassing term, aggression can be expressed in actions that range from slamming a door at the office to murdering a group of students at school.
More important, aggression is measurable, and if you can measure aggression, you can manage aggression. Aggression can be an angry finger pointed in the air – or on the trigger”