Evil Deeds

Thanks for your response to Dr. Stosny. Could you please summarize what you are trying to say here in layman's terms. Maybe later after some research I'll see if I can summarize what you said but for now I'd be interested in your summary.

After reading and re-reading your response is this the source or cause of anger? "Children experiencing parents or caretakers as unloving, rejecting or hostile and not being recognized, accepted, and loved for who we are -- feelings of being unlovable and unworthy of love--."

Also what do you mean by "work through their anger"? Maybe an example would help. How would someone "work through their anger"?

There is no single source of anger. If you were to read the opening chapter of my 1996 book (Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity), titled "The Angry American: An Epidemic of Rage and Violence" (available free at the link in my post), I discuss the nature of anger and rage, their fundamental relationship with frustration, and what I call their "existential roots": e.g., violations of one's dignity and right to self-determination; victimization; abuse; meaninglessness; alienation, loneliness and isolation; failure to find personal recognition, love and acceptance; and several others. "Narcissistic wounding" such as infantile or childhood neglect, abandonment, misattunement, or rejection are some of the earliest causes for appropriate anger or rage. These are universal sources of anger, which, when mismanaged, denied or chronically repressed, later become pathological or neurotic anger and rage. "Working through" such anger or rage in psychotherapy involves first, a conscious acknowledgment of it and its full extent, as well as one's own fear of it, which is often why we continue to repress it, making it progressively more powerful and problematical. Second, one must recognize its true origin, and be willing to tolerate experiencing this anger--and the pain or other feelings it was initially triggered by--rather than neurotically "acting it out," which is a way of avoiding becoming conscious of the source, or trying to drug or drink it away. This is how most people avoid dealing with their anger. In therapy, to cite one of my mentors, Dr. Rollo May, "What we try to do is to shift or redirect the anger and the rage into those positive pursuits that the person has been omitting from his or her life." (from his Foreword to my book). So thirdly, the patient must learn to deal with and channel his or her anger more constructively, using it for positive change when possible. I provide several case examples in my book. Anger, and even rage, have positive potential, depending upon how they are expressed and utilized. This is why it is so crucial in psychotherapy for therapists to recognize anger's valuable and even creative aspects in juxtaposition to its notoriously destructive power.

What is most intersting in Dr Stosneys blog Anger Problems in the Fog of Dogma are the seemingly shaming comments interlaced throughout his recent posting that gain momentum as he goes along directed towards Dr Diamond and his posting Anger Mismanagement .
Perhaps if Dr Stosney was more certain of his piece and less ' threatened ' by Dr Diamonds observations his heightened affect shame stimulated by unattended historical cues perhaps to quote Dr Diamonds observations the alternative views of Dr Diamond might produce a blog with less shaming comments and more 'appropriate' ones next time n'est pas?

See below.... lot of food and drink associations with the shaming comments which are also quite interesting.....

at least that there was an outbreak of infantile suppression of anger 20 years ago. (Something in the water supply got into breast milk?"

He also seems to think that suppressed/repressed "appropriate" anger, like egg salad, eventually turns rotten when stored somewhere in the body, where it "festers" and causes inappropriate anger.

If he does come up with something verifiable, we can have a meaningful debate.
etc etc etc
Dr Katrina Wood

please excuse Dr Stosny correct spelling mea culpa
Dr Wood

It is my understanding and perception that Dr Diamond far from presents his case for anger/rage as dogma.
Instead it appears Dr Diamond seeks to reintegrate anger/rage the stepchild if you will the unwanted, unacceptable of the affects into a realm of acceptability and integration so that it may stand alongside the other core affects with equal importance and dignity
(See www.tomkins.org institute.com for 8 Core Affects )
Shame, perhaps the other misunderstood and maligned stepchild of the affects (one that is still disputed by many as even being a core affect and one that is so frequently disavowed in the therapeutic setting along with anger) has had the same bad rap. (I.e. the notion in some cultures that a family can literally die of shame, too risky too deeply painful by far to admit that one has literally might have no worth)
It is both interesting and fascinating to see and read such passion expressed by two men on the significance and importance of both essential affects which when processed experienced and integrated within the therapeutic setting can bring much healing.
The depressed man bathed in shame finding his anger and transforming his ‘ no worth ‘ script ‘ into the crystallization of’ worth ‘ with clarity bringing forth righteous anger from childhood in a family system where anger was perhaps met with ridicule and shame or violence. Where historical rage is permitted expression and appropriate anger allowed then perhaps organically other affect experiences as well such as fear and interest would emerge during the healing process.( this differs from DSM description of intermittent explosive disorder which describes a historical repression of appropriate anger often expressed explosively in family systems where no affective expression including appropriate anger is permitted. )
Neither one affect serves as a smokescreen for another instead each has an integral part to play in the process of expressing with dignity the experience of loss with the longing to reinstate worth and interest.
Anger that is related with value and clarified has the potential to lift a lifetime of an untreated depressive illness. Indeed unattended and unexpressed shame again related with as well serves to significantly further the healing of depression however the expression and integration of both affects are of equal value in their own way.
Certain clients in family systems believed one particular affect would ensure survival than another, ie through in appropriate anger or hiding in shame, neither one affording a broader and wider range of expressing multiple emotions, just the one frozen and standing alone from trauma. Breathing life into all affective expression including anger including shame is therefore desirable no?
Is it not reasonable to consider that both anger and shame might stand equally side by side each with their own uniqueness and value neither one being dogma, but rather an attempt to reinstate that which was denied and devalued from both ignorance and fear and societal conditioning.
Side by side.

Love - nothing yet infinite possibilities. The place where 30 seconds feels like a million years and a million years feels like 30 seconds. How many lifetimes can one live in a million years? Without love, who would want to live even one lifetime?

The key to compassion is to realize that each person has the same potential to be every other life on earth. It takes conscious effort to not judge or get frustrated with another soul. Compassion comes when you can look at someone else and say: "There I am being ...stupid, controlling, in a hurry, thoughtless"

I find the ego war funny because we are all duped. It took the dissolution of ego in a psychotic break with reality to discover it. It gives one a great outside perspective.

Duped
My ego is a dupee and a duper
And its joke has been on me
I played my part just super
And I even paid a fee

I see it so clearly now
I purchased many lies
Built identity on them wow
They gave me lows and highs

Running toward or running from
Such agony it would cause
Looking for something to numb
The pain to put on pause

It might sound a bit insane
Or extremely paranoid too
But I will not trust a brain
That doesn’t know what’s true

I spent my first life running
Running from the pain
I’ll spend my next life fighting
Fighting to be sane

What would the world be like
If each one did their part
Told the ego “Take a hike”
And listened to the heart

A Smile can change the world

When someone's ego screams in pain
From internalized demons that tortured Cain

Choose not to engage them with yours
For those demons cause illness and wars

Instead...

May your smile reach the depths of someone's despair
And restore faith and hope in those found there

Courageous honesty, love, compassion and forgiveness - Pass these on
Paradise, The Garden of Eden, exists and was here all along

:)

Sorry, but can you explain more.

Thank you for your article, Dr. Diamond. I had read about the issues with catharsis before, and understood how it can inflate rather than deflate a subject's area. But I am curious what you would suggest in terms of countering that anger. I liked your idea of training ourselves to get to the root of our anger, what we are "really" angry about, and dealing with it then. But the anger would still be there, wouldn't it? What are some ways we can not only focus our anger at the root cause, but at the same time try to avoid it? Is "avoiding" anger even possible? And if not, is there a way to mitigate the anger?

Daniel Goleman, in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ, quotes Aristotle in The Nichomachean Ethics as writing:

Anyone can become angry-that is easy. But to be
angry with the right person, to the right degree,
at the right time, for the right purpose, and in
the right way-that is not easy.

I think both you and Aristotle make a valid point: if you're going to get angry, get angry with the source of your problem. But shouldn't there be more to that? What can we do to deal with that problem, or that person, without unleashing our anger?
You mentioned verbalizing one's anger as well as building compassion. Compassion. Building on the positive instead of merely fighting the negative may be productive, but what else can we do to alter our behavior in those times of emotional emergencies? Is it about just controlling our emotions, or changing them? I would be interested to hear your thoughts, especially from the perspective of a forensic psychologist.

Yeah, yeah. Right. Now what?

I;ve been enraged most of my life. It makes total sense. Yet, there are so MANY instances where I can objectively look at myself within context and only sigh, and ask myself: 'Now what the hell are you so angry about?' And the rational, nice, normal side of me says: 'Absolutely nothing!!!'. But the other side is incontrollably enraged. How on earth do I get rid of this stupid anger?

It is partly the not knowing why you are so angry (which is what we mean by being "unconscious") that is the problem. Anger is irrational, not rational. And it is not "stupid." You are angry for good reason, but the reasons are not what you think. My recommendation would be to find a good therapist who can help you get at (become conscious) of the roots of your rage. And also to assist you in learning to channel your anger more constructively. So it's not a matter of "getting rid" of your anger (the daimonic). It is about better understanding it, accepting it, and redirecting it.