Willard and Marguerite Beecher, students of Alfred Adler, offers some of their ideas about typical patterns of activity in human relationships:
“People divide themselves into two categories. We are predominantly either Swamps or Tractors, depending on our habitual pattern of activity. Tractors are those who are highly active and usually like to charge into problems or situations with much energy. They enjoy showing strength and dominance. Over both people and situations. Swamps, on the other hand, usually have a low degree of activity. When they are faced with problems or demands on them, they usually present a total passivity, which engulfs everything in the hope that the problem will bog down and sink out of sight — if they just sit and ignore it l long enough. This passivity is so irritating to Tractors that they frequently charge in and solve the problem for Swamps. The Swamp is thus one up on the Tractor, and knows it! For some unknown reason, the Swamp is called a “weak character” — in spite of the fact that he wins without effort or investment on his part.
Tractors often feel challenged by the passivity of Swamps and decide to teach such passive individuals to become Tractors, like themselves. Such encounters always end in the defeat of the Tractor, since the Swamp is always able to win out. When a real tractor runs into a swamp, regardless of how powerful it is, it eventually runs out of gas and sinks down out of sight. In human. Relationships passivity can always wino out over activity in a contest of wills. Those misguided individuals who have decided that they can reform a person with a weak character find themselves in a impossible situation.
The Tractor believes he is stronger than the Swamp and exerts all his power to suppress, punish and degrade the weak one. But the Swamp enjoys proving that he can take everything the Tractor dishes out — and then some! He comes up fresh as a daily, to prove the relative impotence the Tractor, who has run out of gas in the self-defeating process of trying to influence the Swamp!
This does not prove that is bad to have a high degree of activity! On the contrary. Every problem demands activity, and the person without activity is seriously crippled in his world. We should develop and maintain a high degree of activity. But we must avoid the. Mistake of the Tractor. We must maintain our initiative and not go about trying to influence others to submit to our will.”
Reference
Beecher, W. & Beecher, M. (1971). Beyond Success and Failure. New York, NY: Pocket Books. Handout from a workshop, Addictions - An Adlerian Approach by Wes Wingett on October 21, 2012.