Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  And as if he knew how Dwight would describe the sight later on, Arthur, who despised him, smirked at Dwight, and wriggled and pranced every step of the way. When I got home from Concrete one night there was a big dog sleeping on the floor of the utility room. It was an ugly dog. Its short yellow coat was bare in patches, and one ear hung in pennant-like shreds. It had a pink, almost hairless tail. As I began to walk past, the dog came awake. Its eyes were yellow. At first it just looked at me, but when I moved again it gave a low growl. I yelled for someone to come. Dwight stuck his head through the doorway and the dog got up and started licking his hands. Dwight asked what the problem was and I told him the dog had growled at me. Dwight said, “Good, he’s supposed to. He doesn’t know you yet. Champion,” he said, “this is Jack. Let him smell your hands,” he told me. “Go on, he won’t bite.” I held my hand out and Champion sniffed it. “Jack,” Dwight said to him. “Jack.” I asked Dwight whose dog it was. He told me it was mine. “Mine?” “You said you wanted a dog.” “Not this one.” “Well, he’s yours. You paid for him,” he added. I asked what he meant, I paid for him, but Dwight wouldn’t tell me. I found out a few minutes later. Something was wrong in my room. Then I saw that my Winchester was gone. I stared at the pine rack I had made for it in shop. I stared at the rack as if I’d overlooked the rifle the first time, and only needed to look more carefully to see it. I sat on my bed for a while, then I stood up and walked out to the living room, where Dwight was watching television. I said, “My Winchester is gone.” “That dog is purebred weimaraner,” Dwight said, keeping his eyes on the TV. “I don’t want it. I want my Winchester.” “Then you’re shit out of luck, because your Winchester is on its way to Seattle.” “But that was my rifle!” “And Champ’s your dog! Jesus! I trade some old piece of crap for a valuable hunting dog and what do you do? Piss and moan, piss and moan.” “I’m not pissing and moaning.” “The hell you aren’t. You can just make your own deals from now on.” My mother was at a political conference. She had done some local organizing for the Democratic party in the last state election, and now they were trying to get her to work for Adlai Stevenson. When she got home the next day I met her outside and told her about the rifle. She nodded as if she’d already heard the story. “I knew he’d do something,” she said. They had it out after I went to bed.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Power and power imbalances are inescapable. Ethel Spector Person, in Feeling Strong, writes that we first learn about power differentials in the power grid of our families. “All power relationships, all desires either to dominate or submit, have their psychological roots in the fact that we were all once little children with big parents, and their existential roots in our feelings of being small people in an out-of-control big world that we need to be able to tame.” Childhood is our basic training for power tactics. We have our will; our parents have theirs. We demand; they object. We bargain for what we want; they tell us what we can have. We learn to resist, and we learn to surrender. At best we learn to balance, to mediate, to understand. All these permutations of power stumble into our adult intimacies, and gender does matter. Boys and girls undergo a radically different initiation in wielding power. Men become adept at direct expressions of power, women at indirect expressions; and these differences are discernible in our sexual scripts. As adults, we seek control in part as a defense against the vulnerability inherent in love. When we put our hopes on one person, our dependence soars. So do our frustrations and disappointments. The greater our helplessness, the more dangerous the threat of humiliation. The more we need, the angrier we are when we don’t get. Kids know this; lovers do, too. No one can bring us to the boiling point as quickly as our partner (except maybe our parents, the original locus of dependent rage). Love is always accompanied by hate. While we fear the depth of our dependence, many of us are even more frightened by the depth of our rage. We resort to intricate relational contortions in order to keep all this combustion in check. Yet the couples who most successfully implement this model of placidity are rarely passionate lovers. When we confuse assertion with aggression, neutralize otherness, adjust our longings, and reason away our hostility, we assemble a calmness that is reassuring but not very exciting. Stephen Mitchell makes the point that the capacity to contain aggression is a precondition for the capacity to love. We must integrate our aggression rather than eradicate it. He explains, “The degradation of romance, the waning of desire, is due not to the contamination of love by aggression, but to the inability to sustain the necessary tension between them.” Jed and Coral Jed is unassuming. He is a clean-shaven, mild-mannered architect, brilliant and well-spoken. He is kind, never the sort of person to get in your face about anything. But sexually, he’s another man. Jed discovered S-M (sadomasochism) as a teenager, and for years he has used eroticism as a venue for aggression. He loves leather, hard surfaces, chains, handcuffs. “I used to be shy, and it was hard for me to assert myself.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  He quietly reflected. Placing his sword back into its sheath, he bowed to the teacher in reverence. “And this,” the master replied again with equal calm, “is heaven.” Here the samurai, his sword held high at the peak of feeling full of rage (and at the moment before executing the prepared-for action), learned to hold back and restrain his rage instead of mindlessly expressing it. In refraining (with the master’s quick guidance) from making his habitual emotional expression of attack, he transformed his “hell” of rage to a “heaven” of peace. One could also speculate on what unconscious thoughts (and images) were stirred when the master provoked the swordsman’s ire. Perhaps the samurai was startled and at first even agreed with the characterization that he was ugly and untalented. This strong reaction to this insult (we might hypothesize) derived from his parents, teachers and others who humiliated him as a child. Perhaps he had a mental picture of being shamed in front of his school classmates. And then the other micro-fleeting “counter thought”—that no one would dare to call him that again and make him feel small and worthless. This thought and associated (internal) picture, coupled with a momentary physical sensation of startle , triggered the rage that led him down the compulsive, driven road to perdition. That was, at least, until his “Zen therapist,” precisely at the peak of rage, kept him from habitually expressing this “protective” emotion (really a defense against his feelings of smallness and helplessness) and forced him to the ownership of his real power and peaceful surrender. In the examples of Pouncer and the Zen master, choice occurred at the critical moment before executing attack. With the Zen master’s critical intervention, the samurai held back and felt the preparation to strike with his sword. In this highly charged state he paused and was able to restrain and transmute his violent rage into intense energy and a state of clarity, gratefulness, presence and grace. It is the ability to hold back, restrain and contain a powerful emotion that allows a person to creatively channel that energy. Containment (a somatic rooting of Freud’s “sublimation”) buys us time and, with self-awareness, enables us to separate out what we are imagining and thinking from our physical sensations. And this fraction of a second of restraint, as we just saw, is the difference between heaven and hell. When we can maintain this “creative neutrality,” we begin to dissolve the emotional compulsion to react as though our life depends on responses that are largely inappropriate. The uncoupling of sensation from image and thought is what diffuses the highly charged emotions and allows them to transform fluidly into sensation-based gradations of feelings . This is not at all the same as suppressing or repressing them.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "I assure you, you were very elegant altogether out there in the wood. I was utterly ashamed of you. Why my father is ten times the human being you are: you _gentleman_!" He reached and rang the bell for Mrs. Bolton. But he was yellow at the gills. She went up to her room, furious, saying to herself: "Him and buying people! Well, he doesn't buy me, and therefore there's no need for me to stay with him. Dead fish of a gentleman, with his celluloid soul! And how they take one in, with their manners and their mock wistfulness and gentleness. They've got about as much feeling as celluloid has." She made her plans for the night, and determined to get Clifford off her mind. She didn't want to hate him. She didn't want to be mixed up very intimately with him in any sort of feeling. She wanted him not to know anything at all about herself: and especially, not to know anything about her feeling for the keeper. This squabble of her attitude to the servants was an old one. He found her too familiar, she found him stupidly insentient, tough and india rubbery where other people were concerned. She went downstairs calmly, with her old demure bearing, at dinnertime. He was still yellow at the gills: in for one of his liver bouts, when he was really very queer. He was reading a French book. "Have you ever read Proust?" he asked her. "I've tried, but he bores me." "He's really very extraordinary." "Possibly! But he bores me: all that sophistication! He doesn't have feelings, he only has streams of words about feelings. I'm tired of self-important mentalities." "Would you prefer self-important animalities?" "Perhaps! But one might possibly get something that wasn't self-important." "Well, I like Proust's subtlety and his well-bred anarchy." "It makes you very dead, really." "There speaks my evangelical little wife." They were at it again, at it again! But she couldn't help fighting him. He seemed to sit there like a skeleton, sending out a skeleton's cold grizzly _will_ against her. Almost she could feel the skeleton clutching her and pressing her to its cage of ribs. He too was really up in arms: and she was a little afraid of him. She went upstairs as soon as possible, and went to bed quite early. But at half-past nine she got up, and went outside to listen. There was no sound. She slipped on a dressing-gown and went downstairs. Clifford and Mrs. Bolton were playing cards, gambling. They would probably go on until midnight.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Right! What right ha' yo' ter start harnessin' other folks i' your Continuity? Leave folks to their own continuities." "My dear man, do you think I am concerned with you?" said Hilda softly. "Ay," he said. "Yo' are. For it's a force-put. Yo' more or less my sister-in-law." "Still far from it, I assure you." "Not a' that far, I assure _you_. I've got my own sort o' continuity, back your life! Good as yours, any day. An' if your sister there comes ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after. She's been in my bed afore: which you 'aven't, thank the Lord, with your continuity." There was a dead pause, before he added: "--Eh, I don't wear me breeches arse-forrards. An' if I get a windfall, I thank my stars. A man gets a lot of enjoyment out o' that lass theer, which is more than anybody gets out o' th' likes o' you. Which is a pity, for you might 'appen a' bin a good apple, 'stead of a handsome crab. Women like you needs proper graftin'." He was looking at her with an odd, flickering smile, faintly sensual and appreciative. "And men like you," she said, "ought to be segregated: justifying their own vulgarity and selfish lust." "Ay, ma'am! It's a mercy there's a few men left like me. But you deserve what you get: to be left severely alone." Hilda had risen and gone to the door. He rose and took his coat from the peg. "I can find my way quite well alone," she said. "I doubt you can't," he replied easily. They tramped in ridiculous file down the lane again, in silence. An owl still hooted. He knew he ought to shoot it. The car stood untouched, a little dewy. Hilda got in and started the engine. The other two waited. "All I mean," she said from her entrenchment, "is that I doubt if you'll find it's been worth it, either of you!" "One man's meat is another man's poison," he said, out of the darkness. "But it's meat an' drink to me." The lights flared out. "Don't make me wait in the morning, Connie." "No, I won't. Good night!" The car rose slowly on to the highroad, then slid swiftly away, leaving the night silent. Connie timidly took his arm, and they went down the lane. He did not speak. At length she drew him to a standstill. "Kiss me!" she murmured. "Nay, wait a bit! Let me simmer down," he said. That amused her. She still kept hold of his arm, and they went quickly down the lane, in silence. She was so glad to be with him, just now. She shivered, knowing that Hilda might have snatched her away. He was inscrutably silent. When they were in the cottage again, she almost jumped with pleasure, that she should be free of her sister. "But you were horrid to Hilda," she said to him.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  What do you make of it?” asked Barbara . “Some dark primitive vagina dentate fantasy in me, no doubt,” replied Ernest. “But still there’s something in this patient that particularly ignites that fear.” Just before drifting off to sleep, Ernest wondered again whether he should stop seeing Myrna. Maybe she needs a female therapist, he thought. Maybe my negative feelings are too deep, too entrenched. But when he had raised that question in the seminar group, everyone, including Dr. Werner, said, “No, stay the course.” Myrna’s major problems, they felt, were with men and could best be addressed with a male therapist. Too bad, Ernest thought: he really wanted out. Yet, he wondered, what about that strange session today? Although as obnoxious as ever in most ways, including her reference to his fee, Myrna had at least acknowledged his presence in the room. She had challenged him, asked him whether he liked her, taken him to task about the sarcastic T-shirt comment. Exhausting—but at least something different, something real, was happening. On her drive to the next session, Myrna listened again to Dr. Lash’s hateful dictation and then to the tape of the last session. Not bad, she thought—she liked the way she had held her own in the last session. She enjoyed making the sucker work for his money. How delicious that he was unsettled by her barbs about his fee: I’ll make sure, she resolved, to zap him with a money-jab each session. The long drive zipped by. “Yesterday at work,” Myrna began the hour, “I was sitting in the lavatory and overheard some girls at the sink talking about me.” “Oh? What did you hear?” Ernest was always intrigued by the drama of overhearing oneself being discussed. “Things I didn’t like. That I’m obsessed with earning money. That I talk about nothing else, have no other interests. That I’m boring and hard to be with.” “Oh, terrible! How painful that must have been. ” “Yeah, I felt betrayed by someone I thought cared for me. Kicked in the stomach.” “Betrayed? What sort of relationship had you had with them?” “Well, they’d pretended to like me, to care about me, be my friends.” “How about others in your office? How do they feel about you?” “If you don’t mind, Dr. Lash, I’ve been thinking about what you’ve been saying about staying here in this office. You know, focusing on our relationship. I’d like to try that.” “Absolutely.” A look of astonishment crossed Ernest’s face. He couldn’t believe his ears. “So let me ask you,” said Myrna, crossing her legs with a loud swish of her stockings, “do you feel that way about me?” “What way?” stalled Ernest. “What I just said. Do you find me narrow? Boring? Hard to be with?” “I never feel just one way about you, or anyone. It varies.” “Well, let’s say in general ,” said Myrna, who was clearly not about to be deterred.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She had an uncanny knack of locating and zeroing in on my major irritants. “Oh, no, you don’t!” she shot back. “I was captain of the varsity debating team at Radcliffe and I know that strategy—reductio ad absurdum! But it’s not going to work. Admit it; you know there’s truth in what I say.” “No; I disagree. You’re totally overlooking the training of therapists! That’s what training in my field is all about—to acquire sensitivity, empathy—to be able to enter the world of another, to experience what the patient experiences.” I was irritated all right. And I had learned not to hold back. We worked much better together when I just cut loose with my feelings. Irene could come into my office so depressed she could hardly speak. But once we tangled about something, she inevitably became enlivened. I knew I was assuming Jack’s role here. He was the only one ever to stand up to her. Her icy demeanor was daunting to others (her surgery residents referred to her as “the Queen”), but Jack never deferred to her. She told me he took no pains to conceal his feelings, often walking out of the room muttering, “I don’t have time for this bullshit.” Not only was I irritated at her insistence that only bereaved therapists can treat bereaved patients but I was also angry at Eric for reinforcing her view that bereavement is never-ending. That idea was part of an ongoing debate between me and Irene. I was taking a well-established, sound position, namely, that the work of mourning consists of gradually detaching oneself from the one who died and redirecting one’s energy toward others. Freud first elaborated this understanding of grief in 1915 in Mourning and Melancholia, and since then this approach has been supported by much clinical observation and empirical research. In my own research, completed just before I took on Irene’s case, every single widow and widower I studied gradually detached from the dead spouse and then reinvested in something or someone else. And that was true for even those who had had the most loving of marriages. In fact, we found strong evidence that many of the widows who had had the best marriages went through the bereavement and detachment process more easily than those who had had a deeply conflicted one. (The explanation for this paradox lay, it seemed to me, in “regret”: for those who had spent their lives married to the wrong person, bereavement was more complicated because they also had to grieve for themselves, for their many squandered years.) Since Irene’s marriage appeared to me to have been exceptionally loving and supportive, I had initially predicted a relatively uncomplicated bereavement. But Irene was highly critical of most traditional attitudes about bereavement. She hated my comments about detachment and dismissed my research out of hand: “We bereaved have learned to give the answers investigators want.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  As individuals congregated in populated communities, their survival need for constant environmental vigilance waned. Their awareness of bodily sensation took on more of a social function—what is now termed social and emotional intelligence. Survival no longer depended solely on the urgency of fight, flight or freeze. Rather, as society became more and more complex, the need for greater mental capacity to navigate our position within the group increased. Nuanced body language—the reading of facial and postural cues (the unspoken language of the body)—gave way to establishing impulse control, which propelled our progenitors toward an increasingly mental framework. By the so-called age of reason, in the mid-seventeenth century, the importance of rationality ascended to new heights. Disembodiment, in the alleged service of this rationality, had become the norm. Instincts and the immediacy of physical drives (such as sex) had become an embarrassment or worse. The subjugating power of the church reinforced this deepening split between mind and body. Finally, the supremacy of rationality congealed in Descartes’ “I think; therefore I am,” an iconic statement for modernity. The rest is history, for better and for worse. However, while apparently disengaged, our compelling instincts remain coiled, waiting to ignite and reunite body and mind into effective coordinated action. If, for example, we become stranded in the wilderness, our instincts for predation, protection and shelter will click into sharp focus. If not we will surely die. Additionally, the full power of our intellects will be enrolled to service these bodily instincts. The snapping twig, a novel scent or a fleeting shadow will arouse us to a heightened alert readiness. Sticks, leaves and mud will present themselves as precious building material and protection from the elements. When death looms, rumination is worthless, while body engagement in the here and now is invaluable. Mostly, though, our gripping survival instincts seem largely useless; in fact, in day-to-day life they are frequently detrimental. We expend an enormous amount of energy suppressing our instinctual eruptions. For example, when our boss passes over us and promotes a less experienced rival, we (perceiving actual threat) momentarily explode, then stuff our murderous rage back into our bodies from whence it came—almost before we can feel it. The cumulative consequences of suppressing such powerful impulses, however, takes its toll in the form of back pain, headaches, high blood pressure, heart disease and gastrointestinal disorders, just to mention a few.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. (in Marc. i. 6, 8) But in that He gives most profusely His gifts of healing and doctrine on the sabbath day, He teaches, that He is not under the Law, but above the Law, and does not choose the Jewish sabbath, but the true sabbath, and our rest is pleasing to the Lord, if, in order to attend to the health of our souls, we abstain from slavish work, that is, from all unlawful things. It goes on, and immediately the fever left her, &c. The health which is conferred at the command of the Lord, returns at once entire, accompanied with such strength, that she is able to minister to those, of whose help she had before stood in need. Again, if we suppose that the man delivered from the devil means, in the moral way of interpretation, the soul purged from unclean thoughts, fitly does the woman cured of a fever by the command of God mean the flesh, restrained from the heat of its concupiscence by the precepts of continence. PSEUDO-JEROME. For the fever means intemperance, from which, we the sons of the synagoguek, by the hand of discipline, and by the lifting up of our desires, are healed, and minister to the will of Him who heals us. THEOPHYLACT. But he has a fever who is angry, and in the unruliness of his anger stretches forth his hands to do hurt; but if reason restrains his hands, he will arise, and so serve reason. 1:32–3432. And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils. 33. And all the city was gathered together at the door. 34. And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him. THEOPHYLACT. Because the multitude thought that it was not lawful to heal on the sabbath day, they waited for the evening, to bring those who were to be healed to Jesus. Wherefore it is said, And at even, when the sun had set. There follows, and he healed many that were vexed with divers diseases. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Vict. Ant. e Cat. in Marc.) Now in that he says many, all are to be understood according to the Scripture mode of expression. THEOPHYLACT. Or he says many, because there were some faithless persons, who could not at all be cured on account of their unfaithfulness. Therefore He healed many of those who were brought, that is, all who had faith. It goes on, and cast out many devils.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  “I don’t want to change my name.” “You don’t want to change your name?” “No sir.” He put his fork down. His nostrils were flaring. “Why not?” “I don’t know. I just don’t.” “Well that’s a lot of crap, because you’ve already changed your name once. Right?” “Yes sir.” “Then you might as well change the other name too, make a clean sweep.” “But it’s my last name.” “Oh, for Christ’s sake. You think anybody cares what you call yourself?” I shrugged. “Don’t badger him,” my mother said. “He’s already made up his mind.” “We’re talking about Paris!” Dwight shouted. “It was his choice,” she said. Dwight jabbed his finger at me. “You’re going.” “Only if he wants to,” my mother said. “You’re going,” he repeated. EXCEPT FOR ARTHUR, people didn’t say much about my not going to Paris. They’d probably thought all along that it was just one of my stories. Arthur called me Frenchy for a while, then lost interest as I seemed to lose interest, while in secret I went on thinking of cobbled streets and green roofs, and cafés where fast, smoky-voiced women sang songs about their absolute lack of remorse.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  By telling them not to touch I was mapping a space that would give her room to go after him. That, in turn, would give him the feeling of being desired. “I’ll make this clear for you. No contact. No pecks, no kissing, no massage, no strokes. Nothing. Sorry, you guys. You can write, you can send notes, you can make eyes—whatever else you want to do. Because at this point you have smothered sizzle with affection, leaving it with no way to ignite.” Candace was ready to comply with my suggestion. “OK,” she agreed. “It’s hateful, but it’s a good idea.” I wondered who would have the harder time following my prescription. While Candace presented herself as the “touch whore,” I suspected that Jimmy would be the first to break the agreement, for he had more at stake. He had been furious for years, and he had never known how to be angry with a person he also loves—how to be mad and connected at the same time. Behind his restraint, behind the sweet caresses, lay the unarticulated fear that ire inevitably leads to separation. During the first several weeks, Jimmy repeatedly slipped. So I instructed Candace to become more forceful in maintaining the hands-off rule. I was looking to up the ante. Eventually, Jimmy got worked up enough to comply. “About a month into it, I wanted nothing to do with her.” Removing the protective layer of affection turned out to be more effective than I had anticipated. “Safe might not be attractive to me,” Candace admitted. “But I’ve come to rely on it. These last few weeks he’s been more removed, and it’s been really uncomfortable. We’re not used to being this way. I got what I asked for, but I’m not sure it’s what I wanted.” Candace and Jimmy had constructed an intimacy that precluded conflict of any sort. All the tension was crystallized in their sexual impasse. It was the one place where they maintained their distinction. By upsetting the balance of their harmonious but sexually flat relationship, I hoped to introduce an increased sense of otherness; for without that, there was no way desire would emerge. A few months into our work together, Candace and Jimmy reported that they had noticed a difference, but they still had a long trek ahead. “In a lot of ways we have so much in terms of our relationship. We have a lot to be thankful for, and I know that,” Candace told me. “But we’ve also come to realize that being close doesn’t mean never fighting. It’s funny, because the one thing that we were so proud of was actually kind of a problem.”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In contrast, non-traumatized individuals who feel angry are well aware that (as much as they may “feel like murdering” even a spouse or their children) they obviously wouldn’t actually try to kill the object of their anger. As traumatized individuals begin to come out of immobility, they frequently experience eruptions of intense anger or rage. But fearing that they may actually hurt others (or themselves), they exert a tremendous effort to deflect and suppress that rage, almost before they feel it. When one is flooded by rage, the frontal parts of the brain “shut down.”50 Because of this extreme imbalance, the capacity to stand back and observe one’s sensations and emotions is lost; rather, one becomes those emotions and sensations.f Hence, the rage can become utterly overwhelming, causing panic and the stifling of such primitive impulses, turning them inward and preventing a natural exit from the immobility reaction. Maintaining this suppression requires a tremendous expenditure of energy. One is, essentially, doing to oneself what experimenters have done to animals to reinforce and protract their immobilization. Traumatized individuals repeatedly frighten themselves as they begin to come out of immobility. The “fear-potentiated immobility” is maintained from within. The vicious cycle of intense sensation/rage/fear locks a person in the biological trauma response. A traumatized individual is literally imprisoned, repeatedly frightened and restrained—by his or her own persistent physiological reactions and by fear of those reactions and emotions. This vicious cycle of fear and immobility (a.k.a. fear-potentiated immobility) prevents the response from ever fully completing and resolving as it does in wild animals. The Living DeadRage/counterattack is one consequence of repetitive fear-induced immobilization; the other is death. Death might occur, for example, when the cat persists in recapturing the mouse, repeating the cycle many times. The cat bats his prey until the mouse finally goes so deeply into immobility that it dies, even though uninjured. While only a few humans actually die from fright, chronically traumatized individuals go through the motions of living without really feeling vital or engaged in life. Such individuals are empty to the core of their being. “I walk around,” said a gang-rape survivor, “but it’s not me anymore … I am empty and cold … I might as well be dead,” she told me on our first session.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) But in a mystical sense the disciples pass through the corn fields, when the holy doctors look with the care of a pious solicitude upon those whom they have initiated in the faith, and who, it is implied, are hungering for the best of all things, the salvation of men. But to pluck the ears of corn means to snatch men away from the eager desire of earthly things. And to rub with the hands is by examples of virtue to put from the purity of their minds the concupiscence of the flesh, as men do husks. To eat the grains is when a man, cleansed from the filth of vice by the mouths of preachers, is incorporated amongst the members of the Church. Again, fitly are the disciples related to have done this, walking before the face of the Lord, for it is necessary that the discourse of the doctor should come first, although the grace of visitation from on high, following it, must enlighten the heart of the hearer. And well, on the sabbath-day, for the doctors themselves in preaching labour for the hope of future rest, and teach their hearers to toil over their tasks for the sake of eternal repose. THEOPHYLACT. Or else, because when they hare rest from their passions, then are they made doctors to lead others to virtue, plucking away from them earthly things. BEDE. (ubi sup) Again, they walk through the corn fields with the Lord, who rejoice in meditating upon His sacred words. They hunger, when they desire to find in them the bread of life; and they hunger on sabbath days, as soon as their minds are in a soothing rest, and they rejoice in freedom from troubled thoughts; they pluck the ears of corn, and by rubbing, cleanse them, till they come to what is fit to eat, when by meditation they take to themselves the witness of the Scriptures, to which they arrive by reading, and discuss them continually, until they find in them the marrow of love; this refreshment of the mind is truly unpleasing to fools, but is approved by the Lord. CHAPTER 3 3:1–51. And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand. 2. And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him. 3. And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth. 4. And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace. 5. And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “. . . I feel demeaned. She is a vulgar lady. Does everything possible to eliminate any shred of closeness between us. Nothing I do is good enough for her. Presses so many of my buttons that there’s got to be something of my mother in this. Every time I ask her about our therapy relationship, she gives me that wary look as though I’m coming on to her. Am I? Not a whisper of it when I check into my feelings. Would I if she weren’t my patient? Not a bad-looking woman—I like her hair, gleaming—carries herself well—great-looking chest, popping those buttons—that’s definitely a plus. I worry about staring at those breasts but don’t think I do—thanks to Alice! In high school once, I was talking to a girl named Alice and hadn’t any idea that I was staring at her tits until she put her hand under my chin and tilted my face up and said, ‘Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo, I’m up here!’ I never forgot. That Alice did me a big favor. “Myrna’s hands are too big; that’s a turnoff. But I do like that great slick, sexy swish of her stockings as she crosses her legs. Yeah, I guess there are some sexual feelings there. If I had run into her when I was still single, would I have hit on her? Probably yes, I’d be attracted to her physically, until she opened her mouth and started whining or demanding. Then I’d want to get away fast. There’s no tenderness, no softness to her. She’s too self-focused, all sharp angles—elbows, knees, ungiving—” [A click as the tape came to an end.] In a daze, Myrna started the car, drove a few minutes, and turned right on Sacramento Street. Only a few blocks now to Dr. Lash’s office. She noticed, with surprise, that she was trembling. What to do? What to say to him? Quickly, quickly—only a few minutes until his goddamn clock started ticking off that $150 hour. One thing for sure, she told herself, there is no way I’m going to give back the tape as I usually do. I’ve got to hear it again. I’ll lie, say I forgot it, left it at home. Then I can rerecord his comments onto another tape and bring back the original next week. Or maybe I’ll just say I lost the tape. If he doesn’t like it—tough shit! The more she thought about it, the more sure she was that she would not tell him she’d heard his dictation. Why give away her hand? Maybe she’d tell him some time in the future. Maybe never. The bastard! She pulled up to his office. Four o’clock. Talking time.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I’m sorry, she said, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to diss your video—her English was the best in the class, she was a hair’s breadth from sounding like any American kid—I don’t mean to diss your video, but I’m so sick of this nostalgia bullshit. Sorry, she said, glancing at me, though she knew I didn’t care if they cursed in class, sorry, but all this men-on-horseback crap, what does that have to do with Bulgaria, I mean with Bulgaria now. The hair’s breadth made a difference; there’s a kind of uncanny valley in language, competency can overshoot the mark, so that however perfectly we speak a foreign language speaking it too casually feels like imposture, I don’t know why. I like horses, a boy interjected, getting a laugh, and she rolled her eyes. No, really, she said, this is the problem, when we want to be proud we think of the natsionalno vuzrazhdane , or we think of Bulgariya na tri moreta , we think of Tsarevets. She was right, I thought, though I didn’t say anything; they were at the core of what my students thought of as their national identity, the nineteenth-century liberation and Bulgaria’s medieval greatness, when its borders had touched three seas, tri moreta , a phrase the far right used to stoke nationalist feeling and that adorned tourist T-shirts at every cheap souvenir shop. But that doesn’t say anything about how we live now, she said, it’s all just Kill the Ottomans, it doesn’t tell us anything about what it means to be Bulgarian now. The temperature rose a little at this; some of the students leaned forward in their seats, which were situated around a group of desks we had pushed together to make a kind of conference table, I wanted them to look at each other as they spoke. What does, then, a boy asked, what do you think does tell us about Bulgaria now, and another boy said Berbatov, the soccer star, which made half of the class laugh and the other half groan. Nothing, my student said, raising her voice, nothing does, that’s our problem, that’s why the protests won’t go anywhere, we have no idea how to be Bulgarian in the real world, we have no idea how we should be. The temperature rose still further at this, a number of voices spoke at once, making noises of protest or skepticism, come on, I heard, and gluposti , nonsense, and then my student started to speak again in defense. I had let the reins go too slack, though I wanted to watch things play out the conversation was too hot, a couple of students were looking my way, I needed to intervene.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I’ll try to sail with it as far as possible. “Your point is well taken, Myrna. The T-shirt crack doesn’t fit in anywhere. A stupid comment. And a hurtful one. I’m sorry about it. Not sure where it came from. I wish I could recapture what prompted it.” “I remember from the tape—” “I thought you didn’t listen to the tape.” “I didn’t say that. I said I forgot to bring the tape, but I listened to it at home. The T-shirt comment came right after I said you could introduce me to one of your rich single patients.” “Right, right, I remember. I’m impressed, Myrna. Somehow I had the feeling that our sessions didn’t mean enough for you to remember them so well. Let me go back into my feelings in that last hour. One thing I remember for sure—that very comment about introducing you to one of my rich patients really bugged me. Just prior to that, I think I had asked what I could offer you, and that was your answer. I felt put down: your comment hurt me. I should be above that, but I’ve got my sore spots—and my blind spots too.” “Hurt? Aren’t we being a bit touchy? Just a joke.” “Maybe. But maybe more than a joke. Maybe you were giving voice to your sense that I have little of value to offer you—at best, an introduction to another man. So I felt invisible. Devalued. And I guess that’s why I lashed out at you.” “Poor thing!” Myrna muttered. “What?” “Nothing, nothing—another joke.” “I’m not going to let you drive me away with that kind of comment. In fact, I’m wondering whether we should be meeting more than once a week. For today, though, we have to stop. We’re running over. Let’s pick up from here next week.” Ernest was glad Myrna’s hour was over. But not for the customary reasons: he wasn’t bored or irritated by her; he was exhausted. Punch-drunk. Staggering. On the ropes. But Myrna hadn’t finished punching. “You really don’t like me, do you?” she remarked as she picked up her purse and started to rise . “On the contrary,” said Ernest, determined to hang in there with his patient, “I felt particularly close to you in this session. It was scary and hard today but good work.” “That’s not exactly what I asked you.” “But that’s the way I feel. There are times when I feel more distant from you; times when I feel close to you.” “But you really don’t like me?” “Liking isn’t a global feeling. Sometimes you do things I don’t like; sometimes there are things I like very much about you.” Yeah, yeah. Like my big tits and the swish of my stockings, Myrna thought as she got out her car keys. At the door Ernest, as always, offered his hand.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In contrast, (fixated) emotional states derive from frustrated drives or engagement of the last-ditch mobilization of emergency (fight/flight/freeze). With the paucity of saber-toothed tigers, this critical reaction of last resort rarely makes sense in modern life. However, we are compelled to deal with a myriad of very different threats, such as speeding cars and overly eager surgeons, for which we lack much in the way of evolutionarily prepared protocols. Emotions are our constant companions, enhancing our lives and detracting from them. How we navigate the maze of emotions is a central factor in the conduct of our lives, for better or for worse. The question is: under what conditions are emotions adaptive—and conversely, when are they maladaptive? In general, the more that an emotion takes on the quality of shock or eruption, or the more that it is suppressed or repressed, the more prominent is the maladaptation. Indeed, often an emotion begins in a useful form and then, because we suppress it, turns against us in the form of physical symptoms or in a delayed and exaggerated explosion. Anger and resentment, when denied, can build to an explosive level. There is a popular expression that is apt here: “That which we resist, persists.” As damaging as emotions can be, repressing them only compounds the problem. However, let it be duly noted that the difference between repression/suppression and restraint/containment is significant though elusive. Remember once more how the samurai warrior delicately, but definitively, arrested his compulsion to strike, allowing him to feel his (former) murderous rage simply as pure energy—and ultimately as the bliss of feeling alive. As the successful parent knows, this strategy works well with children. Rather than suppress the child, encouraging a habit of repression, these parents help the child by providing a timely interruption, while guiding the child to feel his anger and source his needs and desires. This is what healthy aggression is about. On the other hand, we have the permissive parent who lets the child go out-of-control with temper tantrums, as the samurai was about to do but with lethal consequences. The effective parent, however, provides and channels the child’s aggression in a useful way. They do this by both allowing the child to feel her anger and then helping the child to understand what she is mad about. If emotions are not too extreme and are approached with a certain stance, they can serve the function of guiding our behaviors—even moving them toward positive goals. Here’s an example with which most of us can identify. Bob comes home from work and finds his house in chaos. He is furious and wants to yell at Jane and the kids, but he “stuffs” his rage. By bedtime he cannot unwind and has an acute attack of gastric reflux.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, The species of anger given by Damascene and Gregory of Nyssa are taken from those things which give increase to anger. This happens in three ways. First from facility of the movement itself, and he calls this kind of anger {cholos} [bile] because it quickly aroused. Secondly, on the part of the grief that causes anger, and which dwells some time in the memory; this belongs to {menis} [ill-will] which is derived from {menein} [to dwell]. Thirdly, on the part of that which the angry man seeks, viz. vengeance; and this pertains to {kotos} [rancor] which never rests until it is avenged [*Eph. 4:31: “Let all bitterness and anger and indignation . . . be put away from you.”]. Hence the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 5) calls some angry persons {akrocholoi} [choleric], because they are easily angered; some he calls {pikroi} [bitter], because they retain their anger for a long time; and some he calls {chalepoi} [ill-tempered], because they never rest until they have retaliated [*Cf. [1427]SS, Q[158], A[5]]. Reply to Objection 1: All those things which give anger some kind of perfection are not altogether accidental to anger; and consequently nothing prevents them from causing a certain specific difference thereof. Reply to Objection 2: Irascibility, which Cicero mentions, seems to pertain to the first species of anger, which consists in a certain quickness of temper, rather than to rancor [furor]. And there is no reason why the Greek {thymosis}, which is denoted by the Latin “furor,” should not signify both quickness to anger, and firmness of purpose in being avenged. Reply to Objection 3: These degrees are distinguished according to various effects of anger; and not according to degrees of perfection in the very movement of anger. OF THE CAUSE THAT PROVOKES ANGER, AND OF THE REMEDIES OF ANGER (FOUR A RTICLES)[*There is no further mention of these remedies in the text, except in A[4].] We must now consider the cause that provokes anger, and its remedies. Under this head there are four points of inquiry: (1) Whether the motive of anger is always something done against the one who is angry? (2) Whether slight or contempt is the sole motive of anger? (3) Of the cause of anger on the part of the angry person; (4) Of the cause of anger on the part of the person with whom one is angry.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In Steps 5, 6 and 7, the gradual restoration of active defensive and protective responses—along with the carefully calibrated termination of the immobility reaction is accomplished. This, along with the discharge of bound energy, reduces the hyperarousal. Together these steps lie at the heart of transforming trauma. In particular, the egress from immobility is associated with intense arousal-based sensations, along with the powerful emotions of rage and frantic, fearful flight. This is the reason the process of trauma release must be worked in tiny increments. I use the term titration to denote the gradual, stepwise process of trauma renegotiation. This process operates like certain chemical reactions. Consider two glass beakers, one filled with hydrochloric acid (HCl) and the other with lye (NaOH). These extremely corrosive substances (the acid and the base, respectively) would cause severe burning if you were to place your finger in either beaker; indeed, if you were to leave that finger there for a few moments, it would simply dissolve since both of these chemicals are so caustic. Naturally, you would want to make them safe by neutralizing them; and, if you knew a little chemistry, you might mix them together to get a harmless mixture of water and common table salt, two of the basic building blocks of life. This reaction is written HCl + NaOH = NaCl + H20. If you simply poured them together, you would get a massive explosion, surely blinding yourself and any other individuals in the lab. On the other hand, if you skillfully use a glass valve (a stopcock), you could add one of the chemicals to the other one single drop at a time. And with each drop there would be a small “Alka-Seltzer fizzle,” but soon all would be calm. With each drop the same minimal reaction would repeat (see Figure 5.3). Finally, after a certain number of drops, both water and crystals of salt would begin to form. With several titrations, you would inevitably get the same neutralizing chemical reaction, but without the explosion. This is the effect that we want to achieve in resolving trauma: when dealing with potentially corrosive forces, therapists must somehow neutralize those sensations of intense “energy” and the primal emotional states of rage and non-directed flight without unleashing an explosive abreaction. Titration [image file=image_rsrc2NA.jpg] Figure 5.3 Titration in the chemistry lab is a way of combining two corrosive and potentially explosive substances in a controlled mixing that transforms the reactants gradually. Step 5. Restoring active responsesDuring my accident, as I was propelled into the windshield of the car, my arm stiffened to ward off the impact to my head. The amount of energy that goes into such a protective response is vast; muscles stiffen to maximal exertion to fend off a lethal blow. Also, at the moment my shoulder smashed into the glass and I was propelled into the air and onto the road, my body went limp.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was about joy, the story he would tell me, but it wasn’t joy I saw as he moved back and forth between my cock and my hand, or not only joy. I had the sense that he was looking for something and not finding it, making his movements sharper and faster; he was asking a question I didn’t know how to answer, that I tried to answer by jabbing my hand and twisting it with each movement he made. But he was frustrated, I thought, and finally he stopped his motion, he forced himself down on my cock, taking me as deep as he could, shaking his head a little as if to work me in deeper, like a dog worrying a toy. I used my free hand to grab his head and fucked him as hard as I could, savagely, in a way meant to hurt him. I tilted slightly on my side and wrapped my legs around his head, trapping him and moving my hips very fast, as hard and as fast as I could, an uncontrolled motion, a kind of spasm to echo his own spasm as he choked on me, though even as he choked he locked his arms around my ass, to keep me from pulling away. I made a sound then too, loud and guttural, almost a shout, and it was only when I heard it that I realized it was anger I felt, hot and eager, I didn’t know where it came from but I would make him feel it too, I thought. I held him in place even as I felt him try to pull his head back, even after he started slapping my thighs again I held him down. I wanted to frighten him, I think, I wanted it not to be a game. You want it, I said as he struggled, you want it, take it then, I said, take it, you fucking whore, and it was the shock of the words that made me let him go, the words and what I felt as I said them.