The Angry Book

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Perversions This part of The Angry Book describes the allimportant ways in which we pervert the normal, natural free feel and flow of anger. These are the principal methods we use to contribute to the slush fund of perverted emotions. Perverted anger provides a reservoir of emotional slush that poisons one's system and leads to all kinds of emotional infections. 9 These are complicated emotional syndromes or sets of symptoms. They are always linked to anxiety. They may be considered as emotional traps that are almost impossible to escape without professional help. Sometimes they are linked to perverted anger, as is often the case with anxiety itself. Irrational sets of ideas, beliefs, and preoccupations may consist of one or more sets of "peculiar thoughts"—for example, my patient's obsessive thoughts about hurting her little son. Compulsions—or the inordinate, uncontrollable need to do something over and over again without apparent rationale—as well as phobias (irrational fears) often have many roots, but I have often found very long roots connecting down to perverted anger. I remember a patient of mine who was terribly afraid (without apparent reason) of red Having just seen this live onstage this weekend (a genuine cabaret-style experience at the Alley Theater in Louisville) several years after seeing the film version -- which to me is the best movie musical to have been made in the past decade -- I was anxious to read the text and lyrics. What's remarkable to me about it, apart from how funny it is, is how effectively Mitchell and Trask capture the essence of a life in so few words.

putters. The on-putter in fact is one of the most flagrant destroyers of human relationships. He is dishonestly and inappropriately "nice" at the wrong times, and he is consistently and inappropriately angry nearly all the rest of the time —inevitably putting a great strain on all his relationships, often to the point of utter destruction. on—and at best it had gross limitations. She ostensibly came to see me because of trouble with a daughter. Eventually she realized that her real trouble was with herself and her attitude toward all people. In time she became a much '"realer" person. As her slush saving account diminished, she became more self-assertive—with both her husband and her daughter. Relationships in the family improved all around because they were no longer dealing with mirror images and superficially sweet, pleasing shadows. Thus this patient began to deal with real people as the frustration of living incommunicado began to dissipate. A great deal of emotional slush is constantly being twisted into anxiety. Anxiety is derived from many sources—emotional conflicts, hurt pride, loss of self-esteem, and so on, but much of it is derived directly from the slush bank. Indeed, it is my belief that the slush bank provides the principal fuel of anxiety-producing machinery. Anxiety itself is a highly complicated subject on which many papers and books have been written. It is not our purpose to write another one here. However, anxiety as the almost inseparable and sometimes indistinguishable blood brother of perverted anger (slush) is certainly a major poison and therefore deserving of our attention. Slush can be twisted into anxiety that is then felt as primitive anxiety in its raw form. Or slushthat dam it up. Victims of these exaggerations or accumulations may transfer a lifelong rage at their mothers to their wives or husbands. Others may become terribly bitter and cynical and spend a lifetime splattering everyone and everything with a loosened fund of old slush. Still others turn their anger from its actual and appropriate direction to themselves and become full of selfhate and suffer serious depression. Some with extraordinary irrational belief splash the slush bank onto others to the point of delusion, fear, and paranoid ideas ("Others want to kill m e " ) . Of course, there are different degrees of putting it on as well as different degrees of inappropriateness. At times the victim will direct his selfhate to other people. At other times he will swear that other people hate him, here again projecting his self-hate. If the degree of selfhate and distortion is great enough, he may suffer from paranoid delusions—feeling that other people want to hurt or kill him. Most cases are not this severe but are still very destructive. In any case, the main intent, conscious or unconscious, is to shift anger to the least threatening person, thing, event, or situation. (Thus a man dissatisfied with his job may chronically find fault with the w a y his wife keeps their home.) This is an attempt to maintain his working ability. Of course failure always stalks on-

what he feels and who he is (our feelings tell us who we are). However, he, too, keeps awareness minimal and immediately strives, with full awareness here, to put the anger down and out. If he has enough will power, he may kid himself into believing that he has succeeded. But it never really works. He may put the anger down, but he cannot put it out, however extraordinary his will power may be. He, too, will inevitably contribute to the slush fund. Here are some of the typical statements the conscious down-putter makes: "So Tm angry—that doesn't mean I have to give in to it. I just control it and put it out of my mind.'' "I take a cold shower and forget about it." "I take a tranquilizer in the daytime and a sleeping pill at night, and it all disappears." "I just take a long walk and forget it." "So I'm a little peeved—I put it down with a couple of shots of Scotch and forget it." "Me aggravate myself? Neverl I just laugh it off." "He gets other people angry, but I'm just not going to let him or anyone else even touch me." larly insidious because the victim continues to see himself as a "nice, mind-your-own-business, don't-make-waves" type, while his slush fund grows and the pus and its poisons spread— without any awareness on his part. Of course he has symptoms of all kinds. However, his total success at cheating himself of awareness of anger prevents him from connecting symptoms with putting-down. Perhaps you know people w h o use automatic putting-down to a great extent. These are some of the typical statements they make: "Me, I just never get angry." "There's just nothing important enough to get angry about." "Yes, I can see that he's arrogant, vindictive, and a cheat and a liar, but it just has no effect on me." "Can't be bothered." "I couldn't care less." T h e second kind of putting it down occurs with completely conscious awareness. Here the victim knows that he is angry and even feels like reacting or responding in an angry way. But like all slush-accumulating victims, he also feels that he has a vested interest in not feeling or showing anger—let alone not getting angry with anybody else. So, he works hard at not being angry or at least at being only minimally angry if he can't obliterate the feeling altogether. This conscious putting anger down does permit the victim at least some awareness of

A free newsletter from Choosing Therapy for those interested in mental health issues and fighting the stigma. Get helpful tips and the latest information. Sign Up Twisting It: The Assorted Poisons 55 jolly fat girl w h o without her awareness ate even more than her usual huge quantities each time her anger was provoked. "Normal" people would have become angry. She ate but took months to connect (deeply and feelingwise) her anger and its repression with eating. She eventually lost weight but only with much work and insight This was also true of the skinny, appetiteless, dour man and the woman w h o perpetually felt guilty for an interminable list of supposed crimes she couldn't possibly have been connected with. Of course the guilt as w e l l as the overeating and starvation were all means these people used for turning anger on themselves, attempting to dissipate it but hating themselves and punishing themselves even more. Think of the self-hate involved in starving oneself, in torturing oneself with a chronic burden of guilt, with stuffing oneself with food to the point of bodily distortion, nausea, and self-revulsion. Think of the poisonous effects on one's self as well as on one's relationships with other people—again having repercussions upon oneself. The poisonous possibilities are infinite. Believe it or not, it sometimes happens that "fat people" (obsessive eaters), guilt-ridden people, and "skinny people" (completely unable to eat, sometimes requiring force feeding or intravenous infusions) trade or switch symptoms, doing S. Dave Babbitt Speaking of Books If his observations are correct, the screamers among us are doing all right. But watch out for those cold and quiet cats. Twisting It: The Assorted Poisons 129 anonymous, just another driver, and he needn't fear any assault on his nice-guy status. But he and his car are one, and together they become a formidable instrument of vengeance. On the road they can strike out for every bit of hurt pride ever experienced. Together they can attempt to exact vindictive triumph for every seeming wrong ever inflicted on Mr. Nice Guy. That he doesn't know his enemy (other cars and drivers) makes it so much easier for him to switch to them all kinds of feeling about other people (from home, for example). What's more, he can go on being ostensibly peace loving. How much easier to work out sibling rivalry, feelings of sexual inadequacy, inability to stand up to the boss or to a castrating wife or mother —and all the anger these produce—on the well-populated road where he is anonymous. I feel very strongly that a great many automobile accidents occur because persons suffering from much perversion of anger, from bursting slush funds, bring it to cars and roads, where it overflows. isn't he letting his listeners in on confidential, secret, and potentially destructive information? He is not only sharing great treasures with them but is also providing them with entertainment through stimulation and excitement. Isn't he giving them material to pique the imagination? For this he expects to be liked and admired. This puts him ( h e thinks) in a position of power and prestige. So he feels that he can have his cake and eat it, too. He has discovered the perfect comprehensive stratagem: just quietly slip into loose, easy talk and he can give vent to slush, be liked, and achieve social power. All these effects exist only in his own imagination. Gossip, much like envy and jealousy, exacts its corrosive toll on the easy talker and his relationships. People, especially healthy ones, do not exactly become endeared to gossips. Indeed, relationships with mature people are inevitably destroyed by easy talk.