Anger, Rage, and Hatred

Jane F. Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Presentation to the MN Psychological
Association Conference
April 12, 2002
Topics
A Story of Anger, Rage, and Hatred
 Some Basic Principles
 Themes from Research
 Ideas that Organize
Understandings of Anger, Rage,
and Hatred
Moby Dick bites Ahab’s Leg Off
 Ahab is flooded with anger, rage, and
hatred
 Thoughts accompany these powerful emotions
 Powerlessness
 Incompetence
 Worthlessness

 These thoughts experienced through

gendered, cultured lenses
Responses
 Fantasies
 Revenge
 Self-aggrandization
 Self as scum
 Memories triggered
 Other noxious events recalled
How Long?
 Temporary

 On-Going

 Periodic
Agency
 Ahab has choices about how to deal with
these strong responses
 He wants to feel better
 Powerful
 Competent
 Worthy
 He can do so
 Pro-socially
 Anti-socially
 Self-destructively
 inappropriately
Pro-Social Responses
 Core response: return to a secure
positive base
 Internalized processes
 Behaviors
 Forgiveness
 Adapt and Learn
 Cope positively with the remaining “soul”
wound
Anti-Social Responses
 Purposefully
 Revenge
 Sadism
 Secondary to solace
 Some sexual abuse/rape
 Some physical violence
 Some destruction of property
Self-Destructive
Responses
 Use of chemicals, food,
shopping, gambling
 Cutting
 Put self at risk
 Ruminating
Inappropriate

 Daydream instead of commanding the

ship
 Compose songs, play bridge, whittle
Basic Principles
 Securely attached people have
capacities for effective self-
regulation of emotions, cognitions,
and behaviors.
 To be human means we experience
anger, rage, and hatred.
Basic Principles
 Cognitions and emotions are integrated
processes.
 This idea is so novel that we don’t
have a word for it.
 Cultures of anger, rage, and hatred exist
 Organized in a variety of ways
 geography, ethnicity, gender,
ideologies, and values
Basic Principles
 How we regulate these powerful states depends
upon capacities for regulation (meanings,
interpretations, management, control) of
 emotions
 memories
 cognitions
 psycho-physiological processes
 Internalized ideas about our entitlements and
“oughts”
 Who our audience is
 Our perceptions of situations
Basic Principles
 Anti-social and self-injurious regulation of these
negative emotions have roots in internalized
processes that are connected to cultural themes
and practice
 Many of these cultural themes and practices are
“gendered”
 Interpretive circles are at play
 Human agency mediates self-regulation
 Human agency influenced by prior socialization and
internalizations
Themes from Research
1998-2002
 More publications on anger
 Fewest on rage
 Themes
 Strong psychoanalytic presence
 Connections to m.i. frequent
 Connections to brain functioning present
 Survivor issues
 Perpetrator issues
 Presence of these issues in therapy
Themes from Research
1998-2002
 Some but not a lot about therapeutic
interventions

 Some self-help literature

 Very little about naturally

occurring positive coping
processes
Some Concepts That Organize
Ideas about Anger, Rage, and
Hatred
 Noxious Events
 Dysregulation
 Human Agency
 Internalized Schemas/Working Models
 Secure Base
 Cultural Themes and Practices
 Entitlement
Noxious Events, Dysregulation,
Agency, Outcome
Noxious Event

Dysregulation

Search for Coping Strategies

Human Agency

Outcome

Self-
Pro-social Anti-Social
destructive
Wants, Entitlement, Outcome
Perception of Wanting Something

Appraisal of How to Get it

Human Agency

Outcome

Self-
Pro-social Anti-Social
destructive
Summary
We all experience anger, rage, & hatred
How we express them depends upon our
inner working models that encode our
beliefs and we ought to act & how others
act
Helping professionals, parents, & policy
makers have to figure out how to counter
these inner working models that lead to
harm