Behavior taxonomy

Observable communication behavior, tied back to evidence.

PATTERNA connects communication patterns to the messages, incident context, and reasoning that establish them. The taxonomy distinguishes individual message behaviors from complete mechanisms within the DARVO family.Analyze conversation

PATTERNA

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Alex & Sam

13 messages · 2 participants

Behavior observations

Four behaviors observed in the messages.

Reality Distortion

2 messagesM04 · M12

View evidence

Blame Shifting

4 messagesM04 · M06 · M08 · M12

View evidence

Intimidation

1 messageM08

View evidence

Contempt / Humiliation / Degradation

1 messageM10

View evidence

The app is on its way.

Fictional example

Analysis rules

How evidence establishes a finding.

A finding follows from established premises. Each label remains connected to its supporting messages, incident scope, and definition.

Behavior-based

The taxonomy describes what a participant does in language. A behavior finding does not assign a personality type.

Evidence-linked

Every finding is traceable to messages, incident context, and the reviewed premises that establish it.

Explicit about certainty

Supported premises establish the conclusion. Contradicted conditions exclude it; missing evidence remains unresolved. Conclusive contextual evidence has the same logical force as explicit evidence.

Context-preserving

The surrounding conversation, timing, and response remain visible. A single self-contained incident establishes a mechanism when it supplies all required premises.

Attachment levels

Where observations can attach.

Findings move from the original message toward broader patterns only when the lower-level evidence supports that step.

Message

One observed behavior attached to one source message, with speaker, order, timestamp, and surrounding context kept available.

Episode

A scoped incident links messages about one issue, including exchanges across time. Its evidence establishes each required condition of a mechanism.

Case

Two established, distinct incidents involving the same operator establish recurrence within the reviewed conversation. An incident containing both PAST and FATE counts once as a family occurrence.

Person

A cross-case pattern only when lower-level evidence supports it. Person summaries should never replace the underlying messages and episodes.

Relationship

A dyad-specific pattern across the same two people, separated from broad claims about either participant outside that relationship.

Review state

Parse approval, analysis progress, human corrections, and rerun state make each output auditable and revisitable.

Mechanisms and their shared structure

PAST and FATE are DARVO-family maneuvers.

The DARVO family comprises self-protective maneuvers that distort the representation of agency, contribution, or responsibility through denial, blame or disqualification directed at the counterpart, and reversal of the represented responsibility structure.Self-protection describes the function of preserving a claimed position through a distorted account. Particular interests, knowledge, conscious intention, and successful persuasion are assessed separately. PAST or FATE establishes family membership; the complete DARVO response has its own requirements.

Complete DARVO response

Denial · Attack · Reverse Victim and Offender

Denial, disqualifying attack, and representations of the operator as harmed and the counterpart as offending address one accountability issue. A supported finding also establishes answerability and material distortion. Attacks on a supporter qualify when their link to that issue and the principal counterpart is established.

PAST

Temporal maneuver

A meaningful present remedy is available for the same objective, time, and constraints. The operator falsely asserts closure, blames the counterpart’s past conduct, and suppresses present agency without meaningful engagement with the remedy. An available replacement does not contradict truthful closure of a narrower original procedure.

FATE

Causal and evidential maneuver

The operator forecasts an outcome, materially contributes to its realization, obscures that contribution in assigning blame, and uses the matching outcome to vindicate that misleading responsibility account. Prediction accuracy alone does not establish blame. Contribution can begin before the forecast; the forecast precedes realization.

PAST-C adds knowledge of the remedy at a relevant withholding opportunity and material concealment. FATE-R requires at least two distinct, completed FATE incidents involving the same operator. FATE-RT additionally requires that operator’s new implicit forecast, the recipient’s relevant knowledge of each incident in the historical witness at statement time, and communicated threatened intervention. A cooperative risk warning is assessed separately.

Each mechanism is assessed from its own premises. The same incident can establish both PAST and FATE; it remains one family occurrence. A forecast followed by an outcome is a descriptive precursor until contribution, misleading attribution, and evidential reuse are established.

Behavior catalog

The public PATTERNA taxonomy.

Message behaviors describe individual communicative operations. Episode mechanisms combine independently established conditions; family membership supplies no automatic score or complete-response finding.

Accountability and deflection

Patterns that redirect responsibility, reshape the emotional center of an exchange, or make accountability harder to review.

3 behaviors

Mirrored accusation

Taxonomy term: Projection pattern

Accusations that reflect similar conduct or motives back onto the other participant, making responsibility harder to review.

Responsibility redirection

Taxonomy term: Blame shifting

Moving responsibility for one participant's conduct onto the other participant instead of addressing the conduct directly.

Role reversal after confrontation

Taxonomy term: DARVO-type response

A message-level observation of denial, disqualifying attack, and victim–offender role reversal around accountability. This tag supplies evidence for review; the complete response requires its separately established incident conditions.

Coercion and constrained choice

Patterns that narrow options, use emotional pressure as leverage, or make a choice difficult while preserving the appearance of freedom.

5 behaviors

Guilt-based pressure

Taxonomy term: Guilt coercion

Using obligation, sacrifice, or moral pressure to push for compliance, attention, or emotional concession.

Constrained-choice pressure

Taxonomy term: Ultimatums

Narrowing available options through high-pressure demands or consequence-backed decisions.

Forced-decision urgency

Taxonomy term: False urgency

Creating or amplifying time pressure so there is less room for reflection, consultation, or careful response.

No-win framing

Taxonomy term: Double bind

Structuring choices so each meaningful option can later be framed as blameworthy, self-damaging, or compromising.

Loaded permission

Taxonomy term: Weaponized permission

Offering apparent permission or neutrality while loading the surrounding context so one choice carries hidden relational cost.

Escalation, aggression, and fear

Patterns of escalation, degrading language, intimidation, and threats. Their communicated content is assessed separately from the recipient’s psychological response.

6 behaviors

Disproportionate escalation

Taxonomy term: Gratuitous escalation

A sharp rise in hostility, blame, pressure, or aggression without enough visible trigger in the local exchange.

Provocation patterns

Taxonomy term: Baiting

Deliberate needling or inflammatory prompting intended to elicit a reaction. Any later use of that reaction as blame or justification is established from the exchange.

Hostile attack language

Taxonomy term: Hostile aggression

Intense verbal attack language directed at a participant, including attacks that do not communicate a specific threatened consequence.

Dignity-lowering language

Taxonomy term: Contempt, humiliation, degradation

Mockery, ridicule, belittling, shaming, or degrading description that lowers dignity in the exchange.

Fear-inducing language

Taxonomy term: Intimidation

Language that communicates coercive menace or pressure. Conscious intimidation and actual fear require their own evidence.

Threat signals

Taxonomy term: Threats

Explicit or contextually established communication of threatened punishment, retaliation, harm, exposure, or deprivation. A cooperative warning about risk does not by itself communicate threatened intervention.

Boundaries, persistence, and control

Patterns where stated limits, contact boundaries, or emotional access are pressed, bypassed, or used as leverage.

4 behaviors

Boundary override

Taxonomy term: Boundary violation

Continuing after an explicitly stated refusal, limit, or request to stop.

Repeated pressure

Taxonomy term: Harassment signals

Repeated contact, accusation, demand, or pressure beyond ordinary persistence.

Isolation and monitoring pressure

Taxonomy term: Monitoring attempts

Pressure around who someone talks to, sees, tells, trusts, or relies on.

Withdrawal as leverage

Taxonomy term: Punitive withdrawal

Using disengagement, silence, withholding, or emotional absence as leverage rather than ordinary space-taking.

Social, family, financial, and sexual leverage

Patterns that use outside relationships, children, money, dependency, reputation, or sexual access as pressure points.

5 behaviors

Third-party pressure

Taxonomy term: Triangulation

Bringing outside people or opinions into the exchange in a way that adds pressure, shame, comparison, or instability.

Proxy pressure and reputation harm

Taxonomy term: Abuse by proxy; smear campaign

Using other people, institutions, or reputation narratives to add pressure, discredit someone, monitor them, or isolate them socially.

Child-related leverage

Taxonomy term: Child-related weaponization

Using children, access, or child-related responsibility as leverage, punishment, guilt pressure, or a pressure instrument.

Financial leverage

Taxonomy term: Financial control

Using money, deprivation, withholding, or dependency to limit practical options or increase pressure.

Sexual consent pressure signals

Taxonomy term: Sexual coercion signals

Text-based pressure, guilt, threat, persistence, or boundary override relating to sexual consent or access.

Pattern-level structure

Some findings only become meaningful across episodes and time, not from one isolated message.

1 behavior

Unstable warmth-and-punishment cycle

Taxonomy term: Intermittent reinforcement

A repeated sequence alternating warmth, relief, affection, apology, or reward with punishment, pressure, withdrawal, or aggression. Its psychological effects are assessed separately.

State the finding. Preserve its evidence.

When the record establishes every required condition, the mechanism is established. Audience rejection does not negate it. Knowledge, conscious intention, protected interests, and actual effects receive their own evidential assessment. Medical diagnoses and legal determinations are separate questions.

Recognize abusive behavior. Start with the conversation.

Use the taxonomy to understand communication patterns, then bring the messages into focus with Patterna.

Analyze conversation

PAST and FATE are DARVO-family maneuvers.

Self-protection describes the function of preserving a claimed position through a distorted account. Particular interests, knowledge, conscious intention, and successful persuasion are assessed separately. PAST or FATE establishes family membership; the complete DARVO response has its own requirements.

State the finding. Preserve its evidence.