Dr. Diamond, thank you for your response and for furthering discussion of what we agree is a vital topic. I think our disagreement is really about the how the brain adapts to its environment. You will agree, I’m sure, that emotions are not just sensations; they have a powerful motivational component that prepares the organism for action. Anger is activated by a certain density of neural firing, normally stimulated by the perception of threat. Your belief, as I understand it, is that suppression/repression of the experience or inhibition of the attack motivation of anger creates a greater sense of vulnerability, which eventually manifests itself as problem anger. That is what I characterize as the steam engine theory - anger builds up and has to be expressed to prevent explosions. I believe that emotions, like all brain processes, are predominantly habituated, at least in their motivational component, whether suppressed, expressed, or acted out. The person who suppresses or represses anger nevertheless devalues others, at least in his head. We know that the brain is wired to adapt to its environment, especially in the emergency emotions of fear and anger. Each activation of fear and anger tells the brain that the environment is more dangerous and that the threshold for activation of protective emotions must be lowered. Let me use the analogy of sprinkler systems in public buildings. The laws of most states require that they go off at around 110 degrees, regardless of whether there is a fire. Unlike the brain, the experience of the sprinkler system does not alter its activation point to adapt to certain rooms more likely to have fires. If the brain were a sprinkler system, its second activation of anger would be 105 degrees. Subsequent activations would be 100 degrees, 95 degrees, 90 degrees, and so on. This adaptation occurs when the anger is suppressed and when it is validated in the therapist's office. Whether the activated emergency emotion is fear or anger depends on several factors, including variations in brain chemistry, the likelihood of prevailing against the threat – you’ll get angry at your wife for shouting at you and afraid of Mike Tyson for doing the same thing – or whether you were more protected in the past by fear or anger. Fear feels less powerful, even though its motivation to seek safety by alliance-building is pro-social and more likely to be successful in most instances. Hence the choice for those less tolerant of powerless feelings will be anger. (That is why I say that the experience of fear or the prospect of fear causes some problem anger, but not most of it.) Because the brain adapts to the danger of its environment, the activation of anger itself distorts its perception of danger, which is why the more you experience (or repress/suppress) anger, the more anger you’ll experience (and repress/suppress). Not that I find the distinction between primary and secondary emotions useful, but shame is a primary emotion present in all social animals as a submissive impulse. In our culture, unlike those in which submission is valued, shame causes most problem anger because those who feel vulnerable a good part of the time confuse the submissive impulse with yet another vulnerability threat. Shame is also activated if we are abruptly cut off from something we value or, later in life, if our behavior conflicts with deeper values. It carries a motivation to get back to what we value or to invest more value in someone or something. It causes anger in those who see it as a unfair punishment for failure rather than a motivation to invest more value, which is most people with anger problems. So anger, whether it is consciously experienced, expressed, acted out, repressed, suppressed, inhibited, or constrained, teaches the brain that it lives in a dangerous world. If it occurs now and then, there is no harm. The more frequent the occurrence, the more tragic the distortion and the more susceptible to the misinterpretation of fear and shame signals. As for appropriate anger, there is no way for an angry person, subject to the self-validation and cognitive impairment inherent in anger arousal, to know whether his anger is “appropriate.” Adrenalin is not for self-reflection and evaluation. Rather, it powers a better safe than sorry system that is wrong more often than it is right. (The angry brain would rather be wrong a thousand times thinking your wife is a saber tooth tiger than be wrong once thinking a saber tooth tiger is your wife.) It is not the therapist’s job to inform the client about the "appropriateness" of his anger. It’s the therapist’s job to help him see his world more realistically and to help him negotiate it in ways that are consistent with his deepest values. These skills reduce the vulnerability threat of fear and shame, allowing the client to reverse the distorted lessons of suppressed/repressed, expressed, and acted out anger. In learning to regulate fear and shame - by following motivations to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect - the client can do both. In following (or inhibiting) the motivation of anger – to devalue and bear arms against a dangerous world – he can do neither. Ethically speaking, I think that before you validate and support “appropriate anger” in a client, you should regularly consult with those who live with him. For one thing, angry people, whether the anger is repressed, expressed, or acted out, have distorted views of themselves and their environment, by definition. They tend to make themselves out to be victims. If you are right that they are ashamed of their anger, then they are probably not telling you how much of it gets acted out at home or on the highway. They tend to be heavy into impression management. Also, someone with your background can appreciate that validating a client’s repressed “eros” or conscious sexual feelings will make it more likely that he’ll feel sexier and want to have sex when he goes home. Similarly, you are making it more likely that the validated angry person you send home will feel more entitled and want to be more aggressive, if not vengeful. It is so much quicker and easier - with far less iatrogenic risk - to help clients strengthen their capacity for compassion (with his motivation to heal and improve) rather that work through their anger. Compassion is an infinitely better ego defense than anger, in that people cannot offend you when you see their behavior coming from their hurt and low self-value. You don’t have to work through anger. You can crowd it out with more compassion. Since you mentioned forgiveness, I never stress it as a therapeutic goal, because it is unachievable as long as the wound is unhealed. Anger is not a process of healing but an impediment to it; like ice on a wound it numbs pain but retards rejuvenation of the injured area. (That’s why you see some people still angry and resentful about attachment losses and perceived injustices that happened decades ago.) Compassion for self and others eventually heals the wound. Only then will forgiveness occur, almost accidentally. You wake up one day and realize that you have forgiven someone who now seems more like you, a frail human, and no longer a demon.