Do I Have a Napoleon Complex?

It's been a long standing 'scientific' belief that shorter people, most especially men, were likely to compensate for their shorter stature by appearing more aggresive and more driven than their average or taller heighted counterparts. Now while I myself am on the shorter side of the equation, I don't know if I necessarily agree with the findings of these studies. The complex, informally given the name the Napoleon Complex (after the famous French General) operates on the belief that due to reasons no more complex than simple jealousy, men who are lacking in height are often driven to 'outshine' the competition and do more to make up for it. This can lead to heightened agression and anger fits.

Now with the exception of my brother and a few of my cousins, no one in may family is exceptionally tall. On average, I'm about the same height as most other Indians from the part of India that my family comes from. And while I won't say I suffer from jealousy due to my height, I will say that some of the aggression that I had in my youth was more due to my peers than necessarily due to my overall height. We've all likely been through one side of this or the other when we were growing up. Unfortunately for me I was always on the shorter side so a natural result was that when other kids started experiencing growth spurts I kept waiting for mine. I'm still waiting actually.

When I was in school, and I'm sure others have had this happen too, I was sometimes picked on for my shorter stature. More often than not, I would attempt to bring some humor to the situation and that helped alleviate any hard feelings but sometimes it wasn't quite so easy and it ended up with fisticuffs. I guess in some sense I didn't suffer so much from jealousy as a need to stand up for myself and ensure that anyone who bothered me realized that they weren't dealing with a simple short guy but one that would at least make picking on me more of an effort. I ran into numerous situations where most of the time, an unexpected joke or comment has ended up leaving people in stitches rather than having them require them. But there were other occasions where I did have to defend myself and whether I won the fight or not, I did end up holding my own.

Is it fair to say then that I did suffer from a milder version of a Napoleon Complex? I suppose that's fair. Still, that didn't mean I went out of my way to pick on someone or do something violent for the sake of violence. Most of the time, and I believe this holds for most people, they would prefer to find the non-violent way out of a given situation rather than seeking to delve deeper into it. Though I may often be the smaller of my peers at work or elsewhere, I don't let it bother me or get in my way and nor do I attempt to use it as an excuse for holding myself back. I try to be objective and realistic as I think most people of shorter stature are wont to do but who knows, perhaps some scientist will come out and say that that is a classic symptom of a Napoleon Complex too.