Get on the Peace Train. A Journey From Anger to Harmony

When I was getting my Ph.D. degree, we studied the various mental disorders, anxiety, depression, psychosis . . . we memorized diagnostic trees and practiced diagnostic interviews. Soon we could distinguish unipolar from bipolar depression, alcohol abuse from dependence, and dissociative identity disorder from Munchausen s syndrome. When I began practicing as a psychologist, I discovered something quite alarming. Something had been left out! Anger was an emotional issue that caused my patients more problems than depression and anxiety. I had no training in it. What was worse was that in those days there seemed to be a sense of approval for people expressing anger. The notion seemed to be that by acting angry, we would somehow be better communicators. There was even a psychologist who specialized in teaching people how to fight fair in marriage, how to harness anger in supposedly constructive ways. That was not my own experience. I found that when I got angry at my wife, and tried to express that, things got worse rather than better. If I expressed anger at co-workers, the outcome was tension and anger coming right back at me. I wondered about my own profession. I wondered if we were rather foolish to think that anger was helpful. It hasn t helped to see that over the years, nationally recognized marriage and family therapists, many personal friends of mine, have gotten divorced. We had sown openness and honesty, speaking up when angry and now we were reaping the whirlwind. Yet it is so easy to become angry. Why was that? I struggled to keep a cool head, to measure my responses and yet it was all so simple to just let go. I was amazed at how easily I and others seem to be able to be angry. I found more and more people who were frightened and intimidated by angry people in their families, and I realized how anger was a bully s way, how one could get cheap power by throwing anger around. I wrote this book because I want to share with others what I have learned about transforming anger into respect, cooperation, and effectiveness.