Category Archives: anger

Road Rage

“A patient arrived in the office for his psychotherapy appointment. He was visibly agitated, and when I asked him what happened, he reported the following incident: He was driving out of his development. To arrive at my office, it required that he make a left turn onto a highway, not an easy task. He has to cross the south lanes to turn left onto the northern lanes in the office’s direction. Turning left means turning onto the left northern lane and crossing into the right lane. The driver must look carefully that no cars are coming in either direction. My patient, noticing a car coming in the left northerly lane but judging that it was distant enough for him to turn, safely executed the turn and shifted right. Once in the right lane, the other car driver starts loudly honking at him. Unnerved by the blaring sound of the horn, turned his head to see what was happening. He noticed that the car driver was angry and repeatedly gestured at him. “It looked as though he was a raving, spitting, and cursing lunatic,” in his words. Feeling both provoked and angry, he felt tempted to pull over and have a confrontation to “teach that guy a lesson.” Thinking better of it, he allowed the whole incident to pass, except he could not shake his angry feelings or revenge fantasies. He reported he felt rattled, incensed, nervous, and wanted to fight and even pull a gun on that guy. Fortunately, he has no gun and doesn’t know how to use one.

It’s a familiar scene. A person starts the day with a fight with your wife, or your boss gives you a warning, or on the way to work or back home, there is a traffic jam that tries your patience. Under these and similar types of circumstances, you feel frustrated and angry. You could quickly explode if just one more thing happens. Then, one more thing happens when another car weaves in and out of lanes, and you get even angrier.

For too many people, all this pent-up emotion expresses when driving. There is a name for it, Road Rage. It is one of the leading causes of traffic accidents and violent confrontations between angry drivers. Of course, for some people, this has less to do with circumstances and more to do with the fact that they are angry people, always seething and always ready to explode. Whatever may be the factors that enrage one driver, the outward expression of this rage sometimes provokes the ire of another driver who feels he must protect his male ego from humiliation. Of course, drivers tend to blame the other drivers for anything that happens but never themselves.

Road rage can have dire consequences. If there are family and friends in the car, an angry confrontation can be highly embarrassing. Among these are sometimes deadly traffic accidents and fights with others who may even pull a gun and receive a citation from the police. In many states, three or more citations can lead to suspension of the driver’s license and spending an afternoon in jail. In other cases, all of this drama can cause a lawsuit with significant financial damages awarded to the other drivers.

How can these scenarios be prevented? One strategy for those with anger problems is to interrupt their thoughts and ask themselves two things: first, everyone must concentrate on their driving and not the other person. In addition, everyone needs to remind themselves that whatever happens on the road is not personal. 

1) Is it worth it to get out of the car or take some other dangerous action and 

2) What are the consequences of taking action?

If you lose control of yourself in these incidents, it’s essential to seek professional help. Learning to control one’s behavior is essential to a functioning civilization. People should not and must not give in to their impulses.

http://www.allanschwartztherapy.net

Help is available. Contact Dr. Schwartz at. dransphd@aol.com

Resentment, Like Holding Onto a Hot Coal

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” ~Buddha

Resentment is an extremely bitter diet and eventually poisonous. I have no desire to make my toxins. ~Neil Kinnock

According to the Oxford American Dictionary, “resentment is defined as

bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly.” The definition includes the fact that people can harbor resentments going back many years.”

Resentment has also been called the experience of negative emotion, such as anger or hatred, felt because of a real or imagined wrong done to them.

A perfect example was given to me by a couple who complained about their younger son, now 38 years old, continuing to yell at them about his childhood. Despite being quite successful in his career, he loudly blames them for all of his troubles. The son is not occasionally yelling at his parents. Still, he does this every time he talks to them over the telephone. It has gotten so bad that his father will no longer speak to him. The son heaps the greatest on his father. His son is not bothered by this break in communication. Instead, his mother has to hear about all the past injustices.

A female patient bitterly complained about her husband. The latter eventually moved out of their apartment because he could no longer tolerate her. She blamed her father for never having time for her while growing up. Then, she blamed her therapist for not finishing her therapy and charging too much money. While she completed her treatment, she left these complaints intact, although her life quality dramatically improved since starting therapy. She was no longer depressed, completed her undergraduate degrees, had a professional career since graduation, and had a vastly improved relationship with her son and daughter. 

However, she held onto her resentments. Perhaps that enabled her to end her therapy successfully. She remained blind to how her complaining harmed other people. I never heard from her again, but sometimes I wonder how she got along afterward.

Parents are the most common object of resentment. As with the couple cited above, they are the people who are frequently the target of blame. These patients blame their parents for all failings and failures alike. 

I have heard patients blame their addiction on their parents. I have heard patients blame their parents for everything from poor school grades to work failures to failed relationships. Many young patients have complained to me they “Would not be depressed except by the way they were treated by mom or dad.”

What is so interesting is that, in blaming parents or others for one’s misfortunes, there is a failure to take responsibility for what has happened. The 38-year-old son never looks at his behavior to understand the role he plays in his present-day successes and failures.

None of this suggests that parents are innocent or that they never did wrong. We know that parents abuse, neglect, and reject their children. There are those parents who are overprotective authoritarians. Some are addicted to drugs and alcohol. In all cases, even the best parents are imperfect, make mistakes, and sometimes be unjust.

An essential step for all adults is acknowledging that what happened in the past cannot be undone. We can build better lives for ourselves in the present and future. To do this is to take responsibility for one’s behaviors and choices in the present. Many patients have told me that they want their parents to admit their wrongdoing. When asked how that would help them, most gave vague answers. Of course, there is nothing to be gained from asking a parent to admit guilt, even if they did so.

Resentment is malignant. There is no better way to hold on to the bitter past than to relive horrible events that happened then. There is no better way to relive the awful past than to continue to blame others, whether parents or anyone else. 

Remember Buddha’s quote that anger and resentment are like grasping hot coal that can only burn yourself.

Pandemic, The Economy, War and Life and Death

Along with American citizens and people worldwide, I am extremely upset about the Pandemic, Ukraine, Russia, and the economy. 

 Many friends, family, and clients say that they believed the Pandemic was over. However, Russia invaded Ukraine, and anxiety rose once anxiety and worry rose again. If these events aren’t bad enough, we have been plagued by rising prices for everything from gasoline, building materials, and food, among many other essential items.

I was born in 1942, in the middle of WW 11. My grandfather’s youngest brother, Uncle Sam, served in and earned the Purple Heart in the first World War. My three uncles served in World War 2. Then, there was the war to establish the State of Israel. Next was the invasion of Israel, the Korean War, Vietnam, invasion of Iraq, Gulf War, and Afghanistan, and more minor wars were between these. And, evermore, nations are gaining nuclear weapons and missiles. In these wars, including the current war in Ukraine, all of us witness acts of destruction. The destruction includes human lives, cities, buildings, and all the things people take for granted in their daily lives.

The great psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, wrote about the issues surrounding war, life, and death after World War 1. 

Freud’s Theories of Life and Death Instincts

Sigmund Freud’s theory of drives developed throughout his life and work. He initially described a class of drives known as life instincts. He believed these drives handled much of our behavior.

Eventually, he believed that life instincts alone could not explain all human behavior. With his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1920, Freud concluded all instincts fall into two major classes: life drives or death drives.

The Life Drive (Eros)

Sometimes referred to as sexual instincts, the life drives deal with basic survival, pleasure, and reproduction. These instincts or drives are essential for sustaining the individual’s life and the continuation of the species.

While we think of life instincts regarding sexual procreation, these drives include thirst, hunger, and pain avoidance. The energy created by the life instincts is known as libido.

Freud proposed Eros was opposed by ego forces (the organized, realistic part of a person’s psyche that mediates between desires). In this latter view, he maintained that life instincts were opposed by the self-destructive death instincts, known as Thanatos.

Behaviors commonly associated with life instincts include love, cooperation, and other social actions. The life drives focus on preserving life, both the individual and the species. This drive compels people to engage in actions that sustain their own lives, such as looking after their health and safety. It also exerts itself through sexual drives, motivating people to create and nurture new life. 

Positive emotions such as love, affection, and social cooperation are also associated with life drives. These behaviors support both individual well-being and the harmonious existence of a cooperative and healthy society.

The Death Drive (Thanatos)

Freud first introduced the concept of the death drive in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle. He theorized that the death drive is the drive toward death and destruction, famously declaring that “the aim of all life is death.”

Freud believed that people typically channel their death drive outwards and manifest as aggression toward others. However, this drive can also be directed inwards, which can cause self-harm or suicide.

Freud based this theory on various clinical observations. For instance, Freud noted that people who experience a traumatic event would often reenact that experience. While studying soldiers returning from World War I, Freud observed they had a tendency to repeat the traumatic experiences that took them back to the combat scene.

He noted similar behavior in his 18-month-old grandson, Ernst, who played a game called Fort/Da whenever his mother was away. To deal with his anxiety, his grandson would repeatedly toss away and retrieve a wooden reel with a piece of string tied around it. Freud wondered how “repetition of this distressing experience as a game fit in with the pleasure principle?”

Freud concluded people hold an unconscious desire to die, but life instincts largely temper this wish.

According to Freud, the death drive stands in stark contrast to the drive to survive, procreate, and satisfy desires. In Freud’s view, all living organisms have an instinct” toward death.” in Freud’s view. The compulsion to repeat was “something that would seem more primitive, more elementary, more instinctual than the pleasure principle it overrides.” He further proposed that the death drive extended that compulsion.

As yet another war presents the danger of spreading into a wider conflict. Could Ukraine become the starting point of a third world war? I could not help but ask myself if Freud was correct. Does humanity have a drive towards self-destruction and extinction? What do you believe? I am available for exchanging ideas at

dransphd@aol.com