The Angry Book

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this particular patient suffered from a psychosomatic condition sometimes found in this kind of killing-mama dream. T h e patient was a teethgrinder and as a result had a rather serious per Hedwig is an internationally ignored song stylist from East Berlin. Her ex-boyfriend, Tommy Gnosis, has found international stardom as a result of stealing Hedwig's music. Not one to take this injustice lying down, Hedwig is on the road. She shadows Tommy's tour at cheaper venues close by, telling her story and performing her songs. described the dynamics of sadism in various works. Sadists suffer from an inordinate dearth of feelings. They are emotionally dead. They just don't feel. Inflicting pain and feeling pain is a last-ditch resort, an attempt at stimulating a feeling of some kind. If they can't evoke feeling in themselves, then evoking pain in others at least vicariously satisfies yearnings to feel. Some blasters like to have an audience; indeed some need and search out an audience. This kind of sadistic exhibitionism has the effect of enlarging the stimulation. This is based largely on the vicarious effect on the audience itself. Blasting, or verbal sadism, is a poison. Blasters are invariably huge slush-fund containers. They above all others are out of touch with their anger. Indeed, as just noted, they are out of touch with all their feelings. By blasting they manage to express some small trace of perverted anger. But the vitriol and acid they spew have little or no relationship to healthy anger. So blasting is a poison, and by blasting, the victim makes use of slush, to stimulate himself and others in an attempt to feel. Unfortunately, the feelings evoked are very paltry and only dimly related to healthy feelings. Momentary feelings of smug satisfaction disappear, leaving an everincreasing need of the stimulation of more blasting. People trapped in this kind of interplay are that 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- 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

The "You, Kant, Always Get What You Want" joke doesn't have it's second half ("but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you Nietzsche")Dreams can be a form of poison. This is true for individuals whose sole angry outlet is dreams and who continually have dreams that are slushladen. Dreams are exceedingly complicated psychological manifestations, and their interpretation is a complex business. Many volumes have been written on the subject, and the last word is far from said. All psychoanalysts agree, however, that a dream can be meaningful only in the terms of the dreamer himself. This means that it is necessary to know the history of the dreamer and the particular and individual meaning of his particular symbols (the words and pictures that appear in his dreams). We must approach any kind of generalization or general symbol-meaning with great care. Every analyst, however, is aware that certain kinds of dreams appear again and again in people with Never Get Angry Again: The Foolproof Way to Stay Calm and in Control in Any Conversation or Situation In her various works, Karen Horney has brilliantly described the complicated role of selfhate. Its most important function is to keep its victim striving for impossible and "ideal" goals in quest of neurotic glory. E a c h failure to be gloriously ideal is met with self-hate, which in effect provides the whip to push the victim up the impossible trail again and again. In any case, the slush fund provides ample fuel to turn on oneself in the service of self-hate. Poisonous vehicles in the service of self-hate come in an almost endless variety of forms. Indeed, nearly all the poisons contain some element of selfhate. At this point, however, I want to mention a few miscellaneous poisons I've run into in practice which were obviously self-destructive. I say obviously only because it was obvious to me. More often than not, the patient had no completely passive ladies who go to wrestling matches and yell, "Kill him, kill him, kill him!" I remember one, the sweetest thing you ever saw—surely no slush at all—who saw at least ten boxing matches a year. She had all kinds of rationalizations for it ("It's just the only sport that's easy enough for a dope like me to understand"). This delicate creature actually used to scream, "I want blood, I want blood, let me see blood—blood, blood, blood!" There are those who will provoke aggression toward themselves. Others wonder why they do it. But they do it time and again, then sit and take it. I had a patient who knew exactly what "buttons to push to turn her husband on." "It's like I push the buttons and turn him on and then just sit there while he really gives me hell. I just don't know what in me pushes me to do it." After months and months of very hard work she found out. She had a considerable fund of slush—of which she was totally unaware. She was much too sweet ever to get angry. T h e kind of manipulation she used satisfied her masochistic needs, her self-hating needs, her glorious martyrdom, and provided her with an aggressor with whom to identify. The best part of the game was that she could completely hide (from herself) the fact that she got satisfaction from identifying with her husband's aggressive role. Mindfulness.com – Change your life by practicing mindfulness. In a few minutes a day, you can start developing mindfulness and meditation skills. Free Trial

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 potential. We also know people who do well for a while and then somehow but inevitably manage to lose all the profits of their efforts on a "good deal" that turns out to be a disaster. Have you known any severe alcoholics, drug addicts, or chronic gamblers? Obsessive gambling and alcoholism are complicated illnesses, but think of the self-hate involved that literally drags a man into the gutter. I have interviewed gamblers who feel relieved of tension only after they have lost eveiything and are absolutely ruined. T h e list obviously goes on and on. Self-sabotage can be acute or chronic, subtle or blatant, mild or severe enough to result in loss of life (there are people who insist on working in disaster areas or as daredevils). Self-sabotage often has many roots and can be extraordinarily complicated. But I have yet to see a case that was not fed by perverted anger, and I have seen cases in which self-hate was the prime motivating force. Anger Management for Everyone: Ten Proven Strategies to Help You Control Anger and Live a Happier Life This is an environment in which people often feel one way but act another way. When they are angry, they smile sweetly or freeze and do nothing at all. In any case, there is a paucity of straight, honest, simply and readily definable expressions of feelings. In this environment, there is sometimes a serious dearth of strong feelings, often to the point of emotional vacuum. Usually what look like appropriate, strong emotional responses are actually superficial, hysterical, manipulative outbursts turned on and off like summer showers. These serve to confuse further and to subvert real feelings. This is an environment in which hysteria may suddenly give way to inhibition and even to paralysis of emotional expression. In this atmosphere small issues will evoke large displays and large issues will evoke nothing. This atmosphere will be marked by many intricate inconsistencies that the child can't possibly understand. This will be particularly so with anger and may result in an avoidance of anger and subsequent crippling in this very important emotional area. In effect, the victim will be told the following: "It is all right for me to get angry in this circumstance but not you." "Sometimes it is all right for you to get angry, but sometimes you can't, even though the circumstances are identical. It all depends on my mood -- which there is no way of knowing." "Why can't you be like me -- I never get angry, but when I do, I don't show it. All I do is get cold and sullen and withdraw my attention and affection from you." "If you get angry, I'll know you don't love me." "Nice boys and girls don't get angry -- especially at adults." "If you must get angry, at least be polite." "If you get angry, you will not be liked." "If you continue to get angry, you will surely get into great trouble." "Civilized people don't get angry, but if you get angry I'll have to tell Daddy, and he will get angry and will have to punish you when he gets home."played handball and put in extra sessions whenever he felt "out of sorts." He told me how he "murdered the ball" and how he "ran his opponent off the court, worked his off, nearly killed him." He at first made no connection at all between his "out-of-sorts" feelings and feeling very angry. He was eventually able to make the connection when he began to realize that invariably something very irritating had happened before each extra handball session. By the way, this man could ill afford to play at all. He had a b a d heart condition. But his kind of self-hating ruthlessness is not unusual among slush-fund exercisers. Sexual problems abound among large slushfunders. I must say that very few sex problems are primary. T h e y almost always stem from problems in relating to ourselves and others. An individual's sex practices are always a reflection of how he functions and relates generally. Here again, the problems are complex and always reflect many relating difficulties. Indeed this is true of just about all human emotional phenomena. They form an intricate interdependent network so that all emotional upheavals produce repercussions throughout the whole person and his relating fife. Just as emotional problems abound in an almost endless variety of combinations and permutations, the same is true of I couldn't resist buying the script for the stage version of Hedwig while I was in New York to see how it was different from the Broadway show. It's mostly the same, although it wasn't written for Broadway at the Belasco, so the set is a restaurant (like in the movie or the off-Broadway versions), and there's a cute letter that starts it off advising location changes for when you're performing your own version.