What is anger: 5 stages of human anger from a psychological point of view

Aggression (anger, anger, rage) through the eyes of a psychoanalyst.

Although, probably, a more correct title for this article would be: “Anger, anger and fury. What is the difference?"

Often in ordinary life, people consider these words to be synonyms and do not see any significant difference between them, although there is, of course, a difference. And sometimes it turns out to be quite significant. In fact, the psychological meaning of anger and rage turns out to be almost the opposite.

Let's see why this is so:

Aggression is an integral part of human nature. It helps us adapt to the surrounding reality.

I think it’s not worth saying that without aggression, both an individual person and all of humanity as a whole would not have survived.

In general psychology, aggression is understood as behavior, a form of communication, “actions” that cause various harm to oneself or others.

Psychologists distinguish many types of aggression: verbal and nonverbal, indirect and direct, open and suppressed, passive and active, constructive and destructive. It is important to understand that approaching a person on the street and asking how long it is is also aggression, albeit constructive. We can receive hidden verbal aggression from her: “You need to have your own watch!” Or passive: Silence, ignoring or other behavior, a contemptuous look, for example. And all this will be a different form of aggression.

But, as we know, the motor for our behavior is feelings. The main feelings behind aggression and are its parts are anger, rage, rage and hatred.

Now let's look at the nature of these feelings and try to understand the difference.

At its core, anger is suppressed displaced anger (or rage). Anger can either boil inside a person, and then we can only observe coldness, detachment, ignoring, arrogance, contempt and disregard for others, or it can pour out in the form of abuse, screaming, breaking dishes, accusations and squabbles.

Anger releases mental tension and provides quick but temporary relief if expressed openly. If this does not happen, anger accumulates as a heavy load of resentment, develops into psychosomatics, deforms character, and remains in a depressed state.

The only thing that is important to note is that the emotions of anger and all other passive aggressive feelings lead nowhere, do not change anything in a person’s life, except that they worsen his health and quality of life.

Anger can be compared to an engine idling at high speed. The engine roars, but the car stands still. To make this metaphor more understandable, I will give a couple of examples. One from everyday life, and the other from clinical practice.

Example A.

A woman gets to work in the city on a crowded bus, swears at the work of public transport, and almost every day comes into conflict with other passengers. It almost comes to fights. She is filled with anger and splashes it over the edge every day. But he continues to ride the same bus every day. Nothing in life changes.

If she could allow herself to get really angry, she would be able to think about why she was putting herself in this situation and find a way out of it. Angry, she could start working better, move up the career ladder, buy herself a car, or cooperate with neighbors who commute into the city to work.

When aggression ceases to be passive, it helps us begin to think and act. But the question still remains: why anger? Why does this woman put herself in this situation every day? Let’s say she has an elderly mother sitting at home, who gets on her nerves, “forbids” her to arrange her personal life, demands and controls.

This, of course, is exhausting and causes anger, but it turns out to be impossible to be angry with her sick elderly mother, who is the central figure of her inner world. Then the anger is suppressed and shifted to another object (people on the bus), turning into righteous anger, which makes it possible to relieve excess tension and not change anything in your situation.

If this woman were not so emotionally dependent on her mother, who was more mature and had support within herself, she could allow herself to be angry with her. Anger could, for example, be expressed in one calmly spoken phrase: “I am looking after you as best I can, and I will build my personal life, and if this does not suit you, you can move to a nursing home.”

Anger in this situation is a more mature feeling, suggesting an internal readiness for action and change, aimed at protecting oneself. Perhaps, in this situation, things would not have come to a real separation, and the relationship would have had a chance to change, to let a third person into the house - a man.

Example B.

A 42-year-old woman came to therapy for an unfavorable family situation. And during psychotherapy, she was constantly late, often tried to forget to pay for the session, and could miss the session without warning.

This was her passive aggression towards me (as a father figure who sets the rules). She was not aware of this aggression. She sometimes found therapy completely useless, but as in the family situation, feeling dependent and helpless, she held on to it.

Over time, she was able to understand her anger, and most importantly, its reasons (envy and hatred of her father, the need for control), and gradually began to express her aggression towards me in words. This happened when unconscious trust became more stable.

Anger turned to anger. She was able to openly talk about how she was annoyed by the rules of therapy and was annoyed by my appearance (reminiscent of my father’s appearance). After that, her lateness and absences stopped. The therapeutic relationship became more open and trusting. It allowed her to see herself in a different light. Thanks to the open expression of feelings, family relationships began to gradually improve.

So. We have come to the point that when futile anger, which maintains a dependent position, turns into anger, as a readiness to act, the situation begins to change.

It is important to say that anger and hatred, paradoxically, lie at the basis of love.

If hatred does not lead to destruction, this strong emotional charge helps people understand each other and get closer, find common points of contact, and feel mutual penetration into each other’s emotional world.

It’s not for nothing that people say: “Former enemies can become best friends.”

Anger, if kept within acceptable limits, brings people together and changes the situation.

“I’m angry with you - that means I’m not indifferent to you.”

Anger, as a rule, implies an aspect of dissatisfaction with oneself, a willingness to change oneself. In essence, anger is a readiness for internal actions and decisions.

In the Soviet education system, anger was considered a bad feeling. She was not accepted. “You can’t be angry with your parents. If you are angry, we will not love you." This forced the child to endure, to suppress his anger, turning it into helpless anger, destroying himself, and latently spoiling all relationships.

A psychologically healthy child has the opportunity to say: “Mom, I hate you.” And receive a smile from your mother in response, and the words: “Yes, you’re angry with me for this and that...”

Anger is the feeling that promotes separation - psychological separation, which is necessary for the development of an independent mature personality.

One of the main tasks of psychoanalytic therapy is the integration of aggression in relation, the transformation of anger into anger.

Anger is accepted and tolerated by the analyst until the trust is formed to express one’s aggression towards him in words. This helps to understand the unconscious causes of anger and gain a new, more favorable experience of expressing aggression.

There is a rule in psychoanalysis: “All feelings should be expressed in words, and not reacted in actions.”

If the anger is reacted to in action (cutting off therapy: Why am I going to pay money, waste time being angry? Or get a divorce instead of making an effort to improve the relationship, being prepared for any outcome) then the anger becomes impossible to integrate into the relationship. This is approximately the same as releasing all the steam from a locomotive through a whistle, which this locomotive should begin to move.

In this article we must pay special attention to the affect of rage.

Rage is an extremely powerful feeling. Its psychological meaning is that the baby can remove obstacles in his path. The furious cry of a baby is difficult to bear; it forces the mother to change her behavior towards the child.

In essence, rage is a defense against feelings of despair and helplessness. The manifestation of rage leads to the satisfaction of vital needs (with rage we are always talking about the frustration of vital needs), and the rage weakens and turns into constructive anger.

If the obstacle turns out to be insurmountable, then the feeling of despair and powerlessness turns the aggressive impulse into passive, helpless anger.

It is important to note that in the course of psychotherapy we make the reverse path: from anger through rage to anger. In psychoanalysis, we call the manifestation of rage an “affective storm.”

The best thing we can do for a person is to endure it. As a rule, after rage, anger no longer seems so dangerous and can be integrated into the relationship.

Author of the article: Dmitry Basov

PSYCHOLOGIST MAKE AN APPOINTMENT

Types of Anger

Anger is usually classified as follows:

• Righteous anger is a state that occurs when a person and his interests are truly threatened by something. The threat to humans really exists.
• Provoked anger is a state that arises as a response of the emotional-volitional sphere to repeated provocative remarks or actions of another person. The situation seems dangerous to the person.

Provokes a negative emotional reaction

• Accumulated negativity is a violent emotional reaction of a person that arises as a result of prolonged suppression of negative emotions. To a certain extent, a person can control such an emotional reaction.
• A random outburst is an affective state, the nature of which the individual himself is unable to explain. Such an emotion cannot be controlled.

Stages of Anger

Anger is a very strong emotion associated with a person’s unwillingness to put up with a particular situation. An angry individual seeks to prove that he is right. Until the moment of climax, anger goes through several stages:

1. Stage of irritation. At this stage, a person becomes dissatisfied that things are not going the way he wants. It may be due to a person's inability to satisfy his needs. In situations of distribution of benefits, a person feels that he has been deprived. Because of this, notes of irritation appear in his intonations; in interpersonal communication, he can be rude and rude to his interlocutor.

1. The individual believes that he is being treated unfairly. His attempts to get what he is entitled to do not bring results. If a person is in danger, his irritation turns into fear.
2. The current state of affairs causes anger, because a person wants to restore balance, find justice, but is in a state of helplessness. He doesn't know what can be done to change the situation.

1. If the situation cannot be resolved, anger turns into anger. The experienced sense of injustice pushes a person to take active destructive actions.
2. In psychology, rage is considered the highest form of negative emotional state. At this stage, a person’s behavior poses a danger to others, since the individual is in a state of passion.

If a person does not make attempts to recognize and cope with his own negative emotions, he can lead himself to nervous exhaustion.

Why do some people get angry often and others not?

As a result of psychological research, scientists have come to the conclusion that all people tend to sometimes experience negative emotions. In a fit of anger, some people behave violently, while others behave restrainedly. So why do some people get angry more often than others?

The intensity of emotions is likely influenced by factors such as:

• age of the individual;
• psychological maturity of a person;
• characteristics and style of family education;
• a person’s ability to recognize and control their emotions;
• moral principles of the society in which a person lives.

Every person can get angry, but not everyone will take it out on others.

People express their feelings differently

Reasons for anger

A person’s experience of certain strong emotions is determined by hormones. In a fit of anger, the content of hormones such as testosterone and norepinephrine in the body increases significantly.

Psychologists identify the following causes of anger:

1. Aggression as a personal characteristic;
2. Physical or verbal aggression;
3. Fear, physical threat;
4. Frustration, the inability of the individual to satisfy his needs;
5. The individual feels pressure from society;
6. Disrespect for individual feelings, insults from team members;
7. Anxious waiting (for example, a traffic jam);
8. Facing injustice;
9. Defiant behavior of someone, whims of a child

The source of the feeling of anger is always a person’s thought, and not some external events.