The Lion Tamer

"I've worked with more than 4,500 court-ordered DV offenders and child abusers, and I never met one who didn't feel like a powerless victim," he says— "No matter how victimizing they are, they see themselves retaliating against an unfair relationship or an unfair world." In this way, we learn from early relationships to blame our unpleasant feelings on others. So as adults, when we feel shamed or disregarded in situations that have nothing to do with loved ones—say, in the hierarchical workplace or in rush-hour traffic—our reaction is to get angry, targeting the person who made us feel that way. At the same time, we get a neurochemical rush from anger that relieves anxiety and provides a physiological boost. The nasty cycle turns many into what Stosny calls "anger junkies."

Anger experts agree that breaking this cycle requires more than an intellectual understanding, which is why cognitive therapy alone doesn't work for many angry people. Those who want to change their angry reactions have to be willing to unlearn deeply ingrained behavior. As Howard Kassinove points out, most angry people have been practicing being angry for years. Breaking such patterns in a 14-week workshop is a formidable challenge.

The Compassion Cure

Stosny didn't plan to study anger. Until age 35, he was a playwright of middling success and taught creative writing at the University of Maryland. Then his father died. His mother had left his father when Stosny was only 11, and the death plunged Stosny into deep depression. He struggled with resentment and at times felt suicidal. Eventually, he emerged from his depression with a desire to write a self-help book. Graduate school in psychology was the next step.

Through a fluke, Stosny wound up taking over an ill colleague's grant to develop a domestic-violence program. He was shocked to find little in the domestic-violence literature on aggression. Instead, he found mostly an antimale sexist litany. One of the two main methods for treating domestic violence, the Duluth model, is built on the feminist idea that domestic abuse stems from men's desire to control women. In Stosny's experience, that explanation of spousal abuse didn't add up. His instincts were right: Research on the Duluth model and on cognitive-behavioral domestic violence programs, the two main forms of treatment for domestic violence, shows that they are mostly ineffective and can even increase emotional abuse.

He sought out his mother for a reality check. His father's behavior was not a show of power, his mother said. "He felt powerless all the time," she told him. His problem, she believed, was an inability to experience compassion. Stosny went back to the psychological literature, theorizing that tapping into clients' capacity for empathy could provide an antidote to anger and aggression. "If you can replace the aggressive impulse with a compassionate one," he says, "you can begin to undo entrenched, violent behavior."

Dressed up with a little pop-psychology packaging, that's the basic idea behind HEALS. If it all sounds a bit New Agey, former clients swear by the process, claiming these steps enabled them to identify personal hurts fueling their anger and to develop a quick and automatic response to defuse anger's triggers. Some carry cards around with the HEALS steps outlined to remind them of its potential, or to hand out to others who have problem anger.

Don Freeman sought out Stosny after pouring boiling water on his partner during a domestic squabble. Some of Stosny's advice sounds "trite," he says, but it worked for him. "Dr. Stosny tells you to stop being a victim and blaming others for your feelings," Freeman says. "The idea of putting yourself in someone else's shoes—that's pretty basic. But staying conscious of that stuff helped me."

Judy Curl, a Baltimore-area therapist who works with troubled teens, took Stosny's workshop to understand her own anger, but she uses what she learned with her clients. One 15-year-old boy was in her office constantly for drugs, violence and aggressive language. No one could get through to him, and she was out of ideas. "I had just been to Stosny's class, and I said, 'You come across as really big and tough and angry. But under that anger, I think you're really hurt. I think there's a lot of pain in your family.'" The boy started to cry.

"That was the beginning of getting through to him," she says. "It was the only approach that worked."

Where's The Proof?

Among those who have devoted academic careers to the study of anger, there is skepticism, surprise and some envy at the popular notice Stosny is getting—including the appearances on Oprah and an endorsement by Dr. Phil, who highlighted Stosny's forthcoming book, Stop Walking on Eggshells. They are baffled, as well, by the growth of his practice (1,000 trained workshop teachers under his CompassionPower brand in 35 states and 15 countries).