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 The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  2. At about the same time, Charles Wesley had a parallel experience with a member of the Moravian Brethren during an illness. a. He had held a somewhat legalistic idea of how to obtain salvation. b. He, too, became convinced that justification came through faith alone. IV. For the next 40 years or so, the Wesley brothers set up hundreds of Methodist Societies all over England and extending to the United States. A. Both brothers were indefatigable preachers. B. It is often said that John Wesley traveled 250,000 miles and preached perhaps 40,000 sermons. He was also a prolific writer. C. Charles, also a preacher, is better known for composing thousands of hymns, the most famous being “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” D. Some followers proclaimed what John Wesley regarded as improper enthusiasms, and he found himself having to deal with criticism that he did not go far enough. V. If not actually persecuted, the Wesley brothers and their followers were certainly harassed in their activities. A. They were often denied the opportunity to preach in churches; hence, they often preached, albeit reluctantly at first, outdoors. B. John came to doubt apostolic succession of bishops, and he laid hands on men and authorized them to preach and to administer the sacraments. 1. John Wesley never formally left the Church of England, but the Methodists split from the Anglicans at the end of the 18 th century, just a few years after the deaths of both brothers. 2. Charles was vehemently opposed to any actions that could lead to a division between the Church of England and the Methodists and was upset by some of his brother’s acts. VI. John Wesley’s thought is expressed in many works, but he wrote A Plain Account of Christian Perfection as a kind of summary of his views. We will use this work as the basis for a discussion of his thought. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 82

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  The second letter came from Notre Dame. Again we sat at the kitchen table, a mother, a father, a daughter. The cigarette smoke nearly cinematic. I sat in silence, my very skin knew the tyranny of speaking. My mother twisted a lock of hair until I thought it would lift off of her head. Why did he say no? Because he could. The third letter came from Cornell. The fourth from Purdue. No. At a kitchen table in Florida. All the rooms of our house carried the weight of father. All of them except one. My bedroom held the wet and dark of my body. It smelled like my skin and chlorine and pot. The two windows in front had long been my portals to the night life of escaped girls. In July, on a night so thick with sweat lesser girls would have suffocated, alone in my bed I decided a leaving. I was leaving, and I didn’t care how. I masturbated so hard that night I scratched my skin raw. Just before I went to sleep, I pictured a suitcase. The biggest one we owned. It rested silently in the garage behind my father’s golf bag and boxes from former lives. Black and as big as a German Shepherd. Big enough to fit the rage of a girl. At the preliminaries for State that year I sat in the locker rooms with Sienna Torres killing a fifth of vodka. If we’d been sons about to be men, I bet we would have taken one of our father’s cars and headed for Canada. Or took our first punches at authority, not minding the black eye. Instead we sat on the concrete underneath the disgusted gaze of shaved and wellbehaved athlete girls and drank. Even loaded I qualified fifth for finals in breaststroke. At finals, a woman I didn’t know with stringy blond hair and glasses thick as a Florida cola bottle came up to me after I got second in the 100 breast. I swam a 1:07.9. She looked like a stoner. She said she was the coach at Texas Tech, and that though she couldn’t talk about it standing there like that, me dripping with water and underage rage, she would call me the next day to talk about a full ride. I didn’t say anything. When my breathing stilled, I looked up at my drunk mother in the stands. She was sort of rocking. I hoped she’d stay up there. My mother: the only thing I knew of Texas sitting up in the stands, slurring her speech. When the coach of Texas Tech called my home, my father was at work. I talked to the woman with the stringy hair and thick glasses on the phone. There was my mother’s voice, its sweet southern drawl curling around my shoulders - like honey does to bees - and there was this woman’s voice and there was me. Saying yes. Yes.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  In my story, Caddy is in the present. She lives next door to a tard neighbor boyman. Because she is sexually insatiable, and because he both scares her with his too white skin and his too big for his body head and his giant pants bulge and the sounds that come out of him instead of language and his pure physical brute force, she goes over to his house one day and takes her clothes off in front of him. He bellows that Benjy bellow. Then he attacks her and fucks her and nearly crushes her. She loves it. She laughs until she cries and an ambulance comes. Trite. So after fantasizing about the dark alley and stomping around and cursing all things Chang Rae Lee that day, I decided to get a Ph.D. Fuck all y’all “writers.” Woo Hoo. I took a break from creative writing workshops - though I have to tell you - I positively HAUNTED the halls of the creative writing department. I don’t know why. I’d just find myself there, looking at bulletin boards, seeing what readings were coming up, grabbing random fliers from the office nerds. Twice I walked by a gorgeous tall guy with a ponytail who looked seriously like Marlon Brando but I didn’t talk to him. Writing student. Sometimes the choices we make come from jealous lame petty places. But they are as real as it gets. I entered the Ph.D. program. I went on to gloriously immerse myself in Derrida and Lacan and Kristeva and Foucault. In Homi K. Bhabha and Ed Said and Gayatri bad ass Chakravorty Spivak. In Dickinson and Whitman and Plath and Sexton and Adrienne you want some of this Rich and Ai and Eliot and PoundBeckettStoppardDurasFaulknerWoolfJoyce (though he kinda always made me want to piss on his grave) SyngeCortazarBorgesMarquezClariceL’InspecteurHenryMillerAnaissexatiousNinDerekWalcottBertoltBrechtPynchonSilko WintersonDjunaBarnesOscarWildeGertrudethemanSteinFlannerymotherfuckingO’ConnorRichardWrightBaldwinToniMorrisonRayCarverJohnCheeverMaxineHongKingstonSapphireDennisCooperKathyyoumakemefeellikemyskinisbeingsheeredoffAcker - cascades of authors kicking Chang Rae Lee’s scrawny little ass. Take that. Yeah. Up until he won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 1995 and it was his book I was assigned to read. I can’t tell you how great that felt. But what nagged at me no matter how far into the literary intellectual pool I ventured, no matter how well I swam its waters, was the story I had yet to write. Itching my fingers like fire. Two terms later, I tried again. Graduate fiction writing workshop. This time the story I brought in wasn’t about voiceless women characters from literary history. This time the story was about my life. About fathers and swimming and fucking and dead babies and drowning. Written entirely in random fragments - how I understood my entire life. In the language - image and fragment and non-linear lyric passages - that seemed most precise. The story I brought in was called “The Chronology of Water.” Something was coming out of my hands. Something about desire and language. Chang Rae? Sorry I thought those things. Thanks for pissing me off all those years ago. Beautiful random nemesis. Love Grenade II

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  But anyway—it’s a great prayer.) Casting our cares upon God means knowing when to let go, when to trust that the matter is safe in God’s hands, and that you have done your best. You can work and trust at the same time, of course. But you can’t worry and trust at the same time. Often we are called to continue working toward a solution or doing what we can to make progress, but we are not meant to anguish over the process as if we were alone. Prayer accomplishes the unique task of giving our worries to God while also discerning what part we continue to play. When we pray, we find peace, but we also receive renewed courage and wisdom to press on. Cast your worries upon the Lord and leave them there. They are safe with Him. 7. OPPRESSOR PRAYERS You’ve probably noticed that all of these “useless prayers” are less about what we pray and more about why we pray or who we are when no one is watching. This last one is no exception. God will not hear our prayers if we are abusing or oppressing those we have power over, or if we are hurting people in our lives we should be caring for. Listen to what God says to Israel through Isaiah the prophet: When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. Isaiah 1:15–17 God takes very seriously how we treat people around us. In particular, He watches how we behave toward those with less power and voice than us. The fatherless and the widow represented groups of people who were essentially defenseless in that society, which was largely agricultural and highly patriarchal. Isaiah was reminding people that coming to God with eloquent prayers meant nothing if their hands were “full of blood.” That is, if during the week they were mistreating people—such as their employees or the poor—they had no business showing up to the temple and lifting their hands in prayer. Peter says something similar to husbands in the New Testament: Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. 1 Peter 3:7 A husband’s prayers will be “hindered” if he doesn’t treat his wife respectfully, as a partner and co-heir of God’s gifts. Unfortunately, this verse has often been used to demean women by focusing on the word weaker . In reality, the message of this passage is the equality of men and women, not their hierarchy.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  Scope: By the middle of the 11th century, the papacy had become corrupt and worldly, and those qualities had trickled down to the bishops and parish priests. Beginning with the election of Leo IX in 1049, several popes sought to reform the church by establishing papal authority throughout Christendom. Leo and his successors, most notably, Gregory VII, tried to enforce clerical celibacy and to stop the buying and selling of church offices (simony). This era of reform saw a formal division between the Eastern Church and Rome, and Gregory VII became embroiled in a dramatic and sometimes violent struggle with the Holy Roman Emperor. In fact, Gregory was chased from Rome, and traditionally, his last words were said to be: “I love truth and hate iniquity; hence, I die in exile.” Outline I. By the middle of the 11th century, the Roman Church was at one of the low ebbs in its history. A. The papacy had become essentially the office of a political ruler in the central part of Italy and had been traded among local families. B. More generally, the church was deeply imbedded in feudal society. 1. Many bishops were more interested in the wealth and political power that went with the office than in shepherding their flocks. 2. Many priests were married or had mistresses and passed their posts on to their children. C. In short, the church was not just in the world but of the world, too. II. The Holy Roman Emperor decided to intervene in the squalid doings of the Roman Church and got “his man” installed as pope. A. This was not easy; his first two candidates died shortly after becoming pope, probably not of natural causes. B. The third candidate, a distant relative of the emperor, became pope with the name Leo IX. In his five-year pontificate, he set in motion ©2007 The Teaching Company. 39

• From My People (2022)

  At his trial, government prosecutors showed as evidence a fuzzy video, available on YouTube, of Eskinder at a public town-hall meeting, discussing the potential of an Arab Spring–type uprising in Ethiopia. State television labeled Eskinder and the other journalists as “spies for foreign forces.” There were also allegations that he had accepted a terrorist mission—what the mission involved was never specified. Even writing about Ginbot 7 and similar groups is apparently considered an offense. Al Jazeera was accused of “direct and indirect assistance to terrorist organizations” after an exclusive report on another organization that the Ethiopian government has formally designated as terrorist: the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), a violent separatist group in Somalia. And two Swedish journalists embedded with the ONLF were also found guilty on the same charge and sentenced to eleven years in the same prison as Eskinder. Five exiled journalists sentenced in absentia with Eskinder received in-absentia prison terms ranging from eight years to life. The leader of the opposition party, currently a professor at Bucknell University, in Pennsylvania, was sentenced to life. Many others have fled the country. I traveled to Ethiopia recently and, with two colleagues, met with the minister of information in my capacity as a board member for the Committee to Protect Journalists, and asked for release of the journalists. We weren’t alone. The U.S. government—which is at the top of the list of international donors that contributed an average of $3.56 billion a year in aid to Ethiopia between 2008 and 2010—according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, condemned the sentences of Eskinder and the others. Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, said that the United States was “deeply concerned” about Eskinder’s conviction, and that it “raises serious questions and concerns about the intent of the law, and about the sanctity of Ethiopians’ constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of the press and freedom of expression.” The statement continued: The arrest of journalists has a chilling effect on the media and on the right to freedom of expression. We have made clear in our ongoing human rights dialogue with the Ethiopian government that freedom of expression and freedom of the media are fundamental elements of a democratic society. While the American government has praised Ethiopia for cooperating in counterterrorism efforts in neighboring Somalia, its individual country reports on human rights found that Ethiopia had arrested “more than 100 persons between March and September [2011] including opposition political figures, activists journalists and bloggers,” and that “the government charged several of those arrested with terrorist or seditious activity but observers found the evidence presented at trials to be either open to interpretation or indicative of acts of a political nature rather than linked to terrorism.” So the U.S. government knows that there’s a problem.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Think about the kinds of things (stuffed animals, special chairs, good light, and so on) that would provide a sense of safety in each room. As you learn to identify and establish your own safe boundaries, you will begin to feel stronger and more in control. Also helpful is making a list of people in your support network. What does each person offer? One person may be a great listener or easygoing companion. Another may be someone you can call anytime, night or day. This list will help you understand your support network and prevent misunderstandings that might occur if you call on someone for something she cannot provide.' Former members of extremely violent or threatening cults may experience feelings of terror or have thoughts of suicide. If you have such thoughts, seek assistance. Ask a trusted friend to sit and talk with you until you are calm. You can also call a therapist or counselor (if you have one), or your local Suicide Prevention Hotline (you can find this number in the phonebook or by using directory assistance). The important thing is to confront your fears, not let them take over. AngerThe emergence of anger is one of the first signs of recovery. Anger is a normal reaction to the hurts and assaults you experienced. Anger is an appropriate response to abuse and exploitation. It is also the most difficult emotion for many of us to get in touch with and address. If you feel angry, it means you are now ready to acknowledge that you were victimized, which can be incredibly painful. What was done may have been hurtful, harmful, and even heinous-and you are entitled to your rage. Just as fear is the backbone of cultic control, anger is the fuel of recovery. Anger is an extremely valuable tool in healing. It fortifies your sense of what is right by condemning the wrong that was done to you. It gives you the energy and will to get through the ordeal of getting your life back together. Suppression of anger while in the cult more than likely contributed to depression and a sense of helplessness. Now the reverse is possible. Anger can be a double-edged sword, however. It can motivate healing or be turned inward, against the self. Some people find it easier to blame themselves than to use their anger in a positive way to make necessary life changes. Selfblame, or anger turned inward, can result in alcohol or drug abuse, physical illness, or emotional disorders, including depression or suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Also, anger can be wrongly directed at innocent others. If anger is expressed inappropriately or unconsciously, it can increase a person's isolation. To be used effectively, anger must be focused on its source. In most cases, that source will be the cult leader and perhaps his top lieutenants or enforcers. Many former cult members use poetry as one means of expressing their anger.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  I find myself out of breath. Alice keeps talking and I am overwhelmed with feelings that I don’t have a moment to digest. I assume that I am feeling what she has always experienced. She helps me get to know her from the inside when, like her, I feel overloaded with information. I have no way to stop things from happening, to understand, or to process the information. It is the end of our first session and I’m left with many questions. I recognize the implicit connections Alice makes between her mother’s traumatic past, her own bad luck, and the wish to save her unborn daughter from the same future. Alice and I plan to meet twice a week. Alice comes back a few days later and to my surprise but also my relief, she picks up where she left off. I wonder how she felt about our first session, a question I often ask in second sessions. But Alice communicates with me a sense of urgency. She sits down quickly and immediately starts talking. “Basically, my father had another family,” she says. “He had children with that other woman, and when my mother found out, he left us. I’m not sure how she found out exactly, but you can imagine how traumatic that was for her. This is where we ended last time, right?” I nod. “Last time you told me about your mother’s past,” I say. “And how your father’s abandonment was a reminder of her early loss of her mother. You described her dissociated anger and how you felt so angry at him for her.” Alice seems puzzled. “I guess that’s right,” she says, and I’m aware that I framed it in a way that felt new to her. Alice starts exploring her identification with and profound loyalty to her mother, who was the parent who raised her. “She is a brave woman who carried a lot of pain but still was able to forgive him and even pray for his happiness,” she says. “She was a bigger person than he was. And you know, after she found out, her family used to call him ‘the monster,’ but she would ask them to stop. She would say that she was sorry she wasn’t a good enough wife and didn’t give him what he needed. For years, that made me so angry. I saw the sadness in her eyes and her struggle to recover from his betrayal. As a teenager, I swore that I would never speak to that man, that I would never forgive him. And honestly, she was the one who tried to convince me that he was my father and that I had to try to understand him. But the more she said it, the angrier I became. “‘I’m not interested in this motherfucker,’ I would say, and I would never return his calls.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Rebecca Bruce, a former member of a political cult that is still quite active, wrote the following poem. It speaks for itself. Anger Risin' [image file=img/page0166_0000.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0001.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0002.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0003.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0004.svg] [image file=img/page0166_0005.svg] [image file=img/page0167_0000.svg] Rebecca now works as a clinical social worker in a primary care clinic. She speaks out about cults and works with people affected by cults. Her poem illustrates the kind of raw anger many former members feel. This anger is better expressed in such productive ways as this rather than being bottled up and turned into depression or suicidal tendencies. Remember, your anger may be difficult for family, friends, and, sometimes, even therapists to accept. You maybe urged to forgive and forget. Former members who were brought up to hide or deny negative feelings may not have the tools or experience to know how to express this potentially healing emotion. Former cult members "need to realize that what was done to them was wrong," writes Michael Langone. " [They] must be allowed-encouraged even-to express appropriate moral outrage. The outrage will not magically eliminate the abuse and its effects. Nor will it necessarily bring the victimizer to justice. But it will enable victims to assert their inner worth and their sense of right and wrong by condemning the evil done to them. Moral outrage fortifies good against formidable evil. Even implicitly denying victims' need to express moral outrage shifts the blame from victimizers to victims. Perhaps that is why so many victims are disturbed by `detached' therapists or `objective' scientific researchers. They interpret the detachment or `objectivity' as implicit blaming [of] themselves."9 People whose cult involvement was particularly traumatic share experiences and traits with people who were physically and/or sexually abused in childhood. Both have been victimized by those they depended on and trusted. Also, many cults physically, emotionally, and/or sexually abuse their members. Anger at such abuse can be expressed in positive ways and transformed into empowerment. The following activities have proven helpful to others: • Keep a diary and write about your anger and other strong feelings. Former members have consistently said that writing about their experiences has been one of the most helpful vehicles for working through their feelings. • Write a letter to the cult leader. Tell him off. It is not necessary to send it, specifically if doing so would put you in danger. You don't have to mail the letter to feel the positive effects of having written it. • Talk to someone about your feelings, someone who will understand and empathize. • Join a gym, take a kickboxing class, or engage in some kind of regular physical activity or sport. Releasing endorphins helps to resolve pent-up emotions. • Imagine scenarios in which your injured pride is restored. Don't, however, act out by doing something illegal or dangerous to yourself or anyone else. • When the time feels right, speak out publicly about your experience. Doing so has been therapeutic for many former cult members.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  This guy name-dropped God like they were buddies, and his heresies became my self-righteous obsession. Though invited to enter their bliss for a three-way, I simply couldn’t override my own intelligence and do it. Witnessing his religious arrogance in all its shameless glory, however, inspired my own libido to new heights, and every erection became a tangible victory over his troubled piety. Dressed in my red stilettos, fishnet stockings, and a thong, I invited him one night to come into my backyard. Camouflaged in my bushes, he spied through the bedroom window into the candlelight as I pranced, stripped, and touched myself. All was quiet but I could see his hypocrisy harden as his hand moved furiously back and forth on his cock. Was God watching now as my pussy took precedence over Him? I couldn’t have God myself, so I settled for treating Him like the competition. In fact, each time Born Again touched me in public, I felt a kind of religious potency emanating from my pussy. I was angry at Born Again for not being who he thought he was. And who I hoped he was. I wanted him to be for real, a real Man of God. Once again, I found myself not fucked by God but fucked over by His apostle. This man’s flaws shone all the brighter in the light of my massive expectations and subsequent frustration. I had, you see, loved him. A little. He couldn’t win with me, and eventually the games wore out and I ended our X-rated morality play. The Holy Fuck never took place. Perhaps this was how he kept things straight with his buddy. THE LAST BOYFRIEND Contrary to appearances, perhaps, I was by now finally beginning to acquire some semblance of romantic discipline. After the disappointment of the truck-driving, gun-toting, sex-addicted Republican Christian, it was time for the Volvo-leasing, pot-smoking, monogamous, left-wing atheist. And a liberal lesson in disappointment. I refused to mourn for the impossible Young Man and the crazy Christian. So I attempted the possible—a boyfriend with an out-of-control dick—and found this, too, impossible, but in a different way. There are two types of out-of-control dicks: the first one insatiable, the second merely undisciplined and poorly behaved. I prefer the former, but often found myself with the latter. In some strange, inexplicable throwback to my premarriage years, I had agreed to be monogamous with this guy after one mad make-out session on my couch on the first date. He asked and I delivered. Perhaps I was having a conventional moment of my own after the transcendent Trinity and the byzantine Christian affair. Naughtiness in the moment was definitely the most fun, the most erotic, but it had a price—the anxiety of impermanence.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  B. When Luther returned to Wittenberg, he carried out a series of reforms, including vernacularization and simplification of the liturgy. He also married. IX. Luther faced opposition all around him and was quick to condemn his opponents. A. He called for the slaughter of peasants who revolted, in part based on what they understood Luther to mean about Christian freedom. B. He saw Erasmus as something of a vacillating coward and rather vehemently attacked him in a famous treatise called On the Bondage of the Will, a response to a work of Erasmus about free will. C. Luther met with the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli at the end of the 1520s but was unable to form an agreement with him because of differences in their understanding of the Eucharist. X. Especially toward the end of his life, Luther viciously attacked Jews and their religion. A. In 1523, Luther had written about the Jews, urging compassion toward them and hoping for their conversion to Christianity. B. In 1542, Luther published Against the Jews and Their Lies, advocating the expulsion of Jews from Saxony or, at least, the burning of their synagogues and books. C. The 16 th century was not a tolerant time, and Luther’s powerful writings and strong personality show him in combat with everyone from Catholics to other Protestants to Jews. XI. Luther was larger than life, a man of great intellect and courage, but one who shared some of the worst traits of the era in which he lived and, indeed, magnified them. Essential Reading: Martin Luther, “95 Theses,” “An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality,” “The Pagan Servitude of the Church,” “The Freedom of a Christian,” in John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings. Supplementary Reading: James Kittelson, Luther the Reformer. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 78 Martin Marty, Martin Luther. Questions to Consider: 1. How did intellectual matters and personal experiences come together to form the Martin Luther who led the break from the Roman Church? 2. From what you have learned in the lectures on John Hus and other late- medieval figures, why do you think a serious Christian, such as Luther, might find himself so vehemently opposed to so many practices of the Catholic Church? 3. How can we understand that a man so in love with God and so knowledgeable of scripture could be so intolerant of other Christians and Jews and doubt their good will or the possibility for their salvation? ©2007 The Teaching Company. 79 Lecture Eighteen John Wesley and the Origins of Methodism

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  She needed a husband because she was too frightened to be alone. I feel so bad for her for not having the life she wanted. I used to blame my stepfather for that. I guess I wanted him to make her happy so I wouldn’t have to.” Alice speaks fast and hardly takes any breaks. She plays with her fingernails. I notice that she bites her cuticles until they bleed. “Don’t get me wrong. The main person I blamed for destroying my mother’s life was my biological father,” she continues. “I hated him. My mom, by the way, was never angry at him, not after she found out that he had had an affair, not even after he had left her for that other woman. She used to say that he broke her heart and that his abandonment of her hurt so much because it was a reminder of her own mother’s death when she was eight years old. My mom never got over what happened with my dad. He was awful. Did I tell you that he had another family?” she says and glances at her watch. I find myself out of breath. Alice keeps talking and I am overwhelmed with feelings that I don’t have a moment to digest. I assume that I am feeling what she has always experienced. She helps me get to know her from the inside when, like her, I feel overloaded with information. I have no way to stop things from happening, to understand, or to process the information . It is the end of our first session and I’m left with many questions. I recognize the implicit connections Alice makes between her mother’s traumatic past, her own bad luck, and the wish to save her unborn daughter from the same future. Alice and I plan to meet twice a week. Alice comes back a few days later and to my surprise but also my relief, she picks up where she left off. I wonder how she felt about our first session, a question I often ask in second sessions. But Alice communicates with me a sense of urgency. She sits down quickly and immediately starts talking. “Basically, my father had another family,” she says. “He had children with that other woman, and when my mother found out, he left us. I’m not sure how she found out exactly, but you can imagine how traumatic that was for her. This is where we ended last time, right?” I nod. “Last time you told me about your mother’s past,” I say. “And how your father’s abandonment was a reminder of her early loss of her mother.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  “At first, he would call me every day. I was only five years old and we spoke for a minute because my mother forced me to. Then, when I was in middle school, he would call once a week and I’d say that I was busy and wouldn’t call him back. At some point he stopped calling. He had a new life with that woman and it felt like I didn’t exist for him anymore.” Alice keeps talking. She tells me about her childhood, and the angrier she gets, the sadder I feel. “Did I tell you that about a year ago I reached out to my father?” she asks. “I think I was ready to hear his side. He was excited to hear from me and super nervous when we met. He said he would do anything to stay in touch with me and to repair our relationship. But the truth is, there was nothing to repair. What I realized by then was that he wasn’t my father anymore. I’m a grown-up now, and he missed my childhood. He is just a stranger who has nothing to do with me, except biologically.” I see Alice thinking and then she adds, “I hope you know that my mother never pushed me to reject him. It was my own choice.” For the first time, Alice begins to recognize what she lost as a child. She was protective of and loyal to her mother and estranged from her father. As a child Alice thought fathers were not important. She wasn’t jealous of her friends who had good relationships with their fathers and believed that as long as she and her mother had each other, they were better off without him. Unconscious dynamics are, behind the scenes, shaping Alice’s life as a repetition of her mother’s history. While she believes she inherited her mother’s genetic “bad luck,” it is in fact the identification with her mother, and the unconscious attempt to heal her mother, that bring Alice to live the same psychological pain her mother experienced: the drama of a daughter who loses a parent. Her mother’s trauma is reenacted in Alice’s childhood and, like her mother, she, too, grows up with one parent and loses the other. Alice’s loss, unlike her mother’s, was not framed as a tragedy for the daughter. Through this reenactment, Alice and her mother could relive the mother’s history together, but this time with the illusion of control; Alice believed that it was her own choice to end the relationship with her father. Instead of feeling sad, like her mother, she felt angry. Instead of being abandoned, she was doing the abandoning. Alice and her mother shared an unconscious fantasy of repairing her mother’s trauma and healing her.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Guy looks confused. “Kind of,” he replies. “I mean, the man is an asshole, that’s for sure, but is he a bad person? Is he the monster his daughter describes? I don’t think so.” He pauses and gazes out the window. “What did you think just now?” I ask when he turns to me again. “I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I’m not sure how I feel about this. There is a noise in my head. I wish I could stop thinking. I mean, it’s clear that she hates her father so much and I feel bad for him,” he continues. “She wrote on Instagram that she wishes he were dead. I guess I understand that part. I used to wish my father were dead.” “That makes sense,” I say, carefully stepping into his childhood. While most kids are afraid of losing their parents, I’ve often heard patients describe that as children they wished for their parents’ death. The parent is the one the child depends on for survival; that wish usually surfaces when the parent is the one threatening the child’s physical or emotional being. The wish helps the child feel less helpless as she imagines she can make the parent disappear. It expresses the child’s pain as well as rage—two feelings that are fused and confused. The child simultaneously feels helpless and is overwhelmed with anger that she can’t process. Abused children often have difficulty regulating feelings. Love and hate intermingle: the people you love are also those you hate. I notice that Guy becomes flooded with emotions. He needs to take a break. “It’s sick,” Guy says. “It pisses me off.” He suddenly stands up. “Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom,” he says. “I’ll be right back.” He comes back a few minutes later, smiling. “Did you notice that I said ‘piss’ and then went to pee?” he jokes. “You see, I know how to therapize myself.” He is conveying that I have taught him something, but also that he is not dependent on me, that he can do it on his own. The ability to master and control his life is crucial. It’s the only way he feels safe, and he needs to make sure that he is in control in our sessions as well. I’m again aware that it’s Guy, not me, who ends each session. When he feels overwhelmed, rather than turning to me for comfort, he withdraws. “I needed to be alone for a moment, to calm down,” he says. I know that there is something about jury duty that awakens his childhood trauma. “As a child, I spent hours in the bathroom. My father used to lock my brother and me in there every time he got angry, which was all the time.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  The most damaging perfectionistic mind-set, however, is when our worth becomes contingent upon our social performance. Anything less than perfect isn’t good enough, which in the land of dichotomous thinking lands closer to “totally incompetent.” When a perfectionist like Rosie inevitably fails to live up to her unattainable social standards, she takes it personally. “I suck at this; therefore, I suck,” is the conclusion. * * * But for other perfectionists, the conclusion is that everyone else sucks. Case in point: my client Vivian. Sitting across from me in my office, Vivian grumbled, “Everybody is so judgmental. My generation is so entitled and petty. The world is full of stupid people. I mean, what makes you think you can walk around not contributing to the world?” The “you” threw me. This was my first meeting with Vivian, who was twenty-four years old, socially anxious, and, as I was learning, very, very angry. “I don’t know how to socialize, and anyway, everyone my age is really back-stabby and immature and superficial. I expected these people to be intelligent and sensitive and mature, but all they do is gossip and back-stab and walk around with this entitlement and arrogance.” “These people” were her co-workers. Vivian had just gotten a new job in the fundraising division of a nonprofit. Vivian liked the work well enough; it was meaningful and rewarding. It was the people she hated. She was miserable—she craved acceptance but couldn’t stop being judgy and critical. Online was even worse. Whenever she scrolled through Instagram, she couldn’t stop herself from leaving cutting little comments on pictures of parties, hikes, or get-togethers. She devalued group pictures because they made her feel so alone. Both online and in person, Vivian knew she was turning people off and alternately felt guilty for being ridiculous, as she called it, and blamed everyone else for being petty, entitled, or stupid. It was like watching a tennis match: guilt, blame, guilt, blame. As Vivian spoke, sometimes the volume of her rants would rise until she was yelling. That, combined with her tendency to speak in the second person—“You walk around like you deserve to be here. You walk around like you’re contributing something to society. Or like you deserve to be alive. Unless you’ve made a great contribution or you’re really worthwhile as a person, you don’t deserve to be here”—made me scoot my chair back a little. It took me a few sessions to realize she didn’t mean me personally; she was yelling at the world at large. I left our first meeting reeling a little. After Vivian was on her way down in the elevator, the receptionist motioned me over. “Can you book a room at the end of the hall next time?” she whispered. “We could hear her from the waiting room.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Does he call these things robbery, and slave-holding, and swindling? No: they are termed enterprise; and business skill; and capitalism. They are termed nature.‘But is it natural, that babies should die for want of milk? Is it natural, that women should sew skirts and coats long into the night, in cramped and suffocating workshops? That men and boys should be killed or crippled to provide the coal upon your fires? That bakers should be choked, baking your bread?’My voice had risen as I spoke; and now I bellowed.‘Do you think that’s natural? Do you think that’s just?’‘No!’ came a hundred voices at once. ‘No! No!’‘Neither do socialists!’ cried Ralph: he had crushed his speech between his fingers, and now shook it at the crowd. ‘We are sick of seeing wealth and property going straight into the pockets of the idle and the rich! We don’t want a portion of that wealth - the bit that the rich man cares, from time to time, to chuck at us. We want to see society quite transformed! We want to see money put to use, not kept for profit! We want to see working women’s babies thriving - and workhouses pulled to the ground, ‘cause no one needs ’em!’There were cheers at that, and he raised his hands. ‘You are cheering now,’ he said; ‘it is rather easy to cheer, perhaps, when the weather is so gay. But you must do more than cheer. You must act. Those of you that work - men and women alike - join unions! Those of you that have votes - use ’em! Use ‘em to put your own people into parliament. And campaign for your womenfolk - for your sisters and daughters and wives - that they might have votes of their own, to help you!’‘Go home tonight,’ I went on, moving forward again, ‘and ask yourselves the question that Mr Banner has asked you today: Why Socialism? And you will find yourselves obliged to answer it as we have. “Because Britain’s people,” you will say, “have laboured under the capitalist and the landlord system and grown only poorer and sicker and more miserable and afraid. Because it is not by charity and paltry reforms that we shall improve conditions for the weakest classes - not by taxes, not by electing one capitalist government over another, not even by abolishing the House of Lords! - but by turning over the land, and industry, to the people who work it.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  In contrast, most royal mistresses would not have dared risk love affairs with other men. A few who did were generously forgiven by their womanizing monarchs. But many would have expected a punishment similar to that of Madame d’Esterle, who became mistress of Augustus, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, in 1704. When the playboy king discovered that Madame d’Esterle had been having affairs with several gentlemen at court, he gave her twenty-four hours to pack her bags and leave the country. Worse was the vengeance of Peter the Great (1672–1725), who in 1703 discovered that his mistress of thirteen years, Anna Mons, had been sleeping with the Swedish ambassador. Peter, who throughout his relationship with Anna had routinely enjoyed drunken orgies, was so enraged at her infidelity that he threw her in prison along with thirty of her friends. For a woman who publicly declared that whoredom was her profession, plucky Nell Gwynn proved remarkably faithful to Charles II, even after his death. Bereft of her royal lover, pretty Nell was courted by numerous suitors. She sadly informed one ardent admirer that she “would not lay a dog where the deer laid.”40 Ironically, Charles’s nobly born mistresses, the imperious duchesses, were not nearly as faithful as his spunky whore. Auburn-haired Barbara Palmer, whom Charles created the countess of Castlemaine and duchess of Cleveland, was the most notorious. Perhaps Charles tolerated her blatant infidelity because she was his dream sex partner. One childhood acquaintance of Barbara’s described her as “a lecherous little girl…[who] used to rub her thing with her fingers.”41 In 1667 Lady Castlemaine was enjoying an affair with the renowned court rake Harry Jermyn. One day when the king made an unexpected visit to his mistress, Harry had to dive under her bed. When she was pregnant the sixth time, the king knew very well the child was not his. He had not been certain about some of her prior five but had decided to claim paternity, since there was a good chance. This sixth child, however, he would not own. Lady Castlemaine was furious that the king was making her look like a whore. “God damn me, but you shall own it!” she cried. “I will have it christened in the Chapel at Whitehall and owned as yours…or I will bring it into Whitehall Gallery and dash its brains out before your face.” Charles maintained, “I did not get this child.” “Whoever did get it, you shall own it,” cried the shrew.42 It was reported that in a few days the king begged forgiveness of his mistress, on his knees.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  According to Augustus’s biographer Karl von Pöllnitz, when Madame Cosel discovered that the king had profited by her absence by having an affair with a wine merchant’s daughter in Warsaw, she thundered, “I am resolved not to undergo the fate of your other mistresses. I have for your sake quitted a husband, lost my reputation, and done all this, because you promised me upon oath an everlasting fidelity. I will not suffer your abuses, except your life pays for them. I am resolved to break your head with a pistol, and then to make use of it upon myself, as a punishment for my folly in loving you.”35 Another unfortunate scene occurred as she was recuperating from childbirth at Augustus’s court in Dresden. A note was passed to the king as he sat at Madame Cosel’s bedside along with his secretary of state, Mr. Caspar Bose. He read it and turned bright red. His mistress was so curious to read the missive that when she jumped out of bed, according to the report, “she showed the King and Mr. Bose on that occasion what no modest woman would have shown her husband without many persuasions.”36 Grabbing the letter, Madame Cosel found it was from Henrietta, the wine merchant’s daughter in Warsaw. Worse, it informed the king that she had given birth to his daughter. Madame Cosel went into a purple rage, crying, “Let her drown it! And would to God it was in my power to drown the mother too!”37 Augustus laughed, but Madame Cosel informed him that if he answered the letter or acknowledged the child, she would, still bleeding from childbirth, take the next stage coach to Warsaw to strangle both mother and child. Madame Cosel’s bad temper was aimed not only at rivals for the king’s love, but at courtiers and officials as well, and worse, she meddled in political affairs. After suffering nine years of her tyranny, in 1713 a coalition of ministers decided she had to be replaced with a more compliant mistress. When Madame Cosel was again heavily pregnant at Dresden and the king was required to ride to Warsaw, his advisers used this opportunity to find him another mistress. They held a meeting, discussing all the possible candidates at the court of Warsaw. They finally settled on Countess Maria Magdalena von Denhoff because “she is sufficiently amiable to be capable of pleasing, but her mind is not so exalted as to be able to rule.”38 The new mistress having been chosen, the cabal had only to make the king and countess fall into each other’s arms. They first went to work on Madame Denhoff, using her mother to counter any qualms she might have about betraying her husband to become a royal mistress. Fortunately, Madame Denhoff readily agreed to the plan.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Even Lillie Langtry, who did not receive a regular allowance from Edward VII, was expected to appear in an astonishing array of new gowns. In her later years, Lillie reported that she had had only one quarrel with Edward during her three-year tenure as his mistress. “I wore a dress of white and silver at two balls in succession,” she reminisced. “I did not know that he was going to be present at both balls, but he was. He came up to me on the second night and exclaimed, ‘That damned dress again!’ He walked away in a temper…. It took me a long time to make it up…. That was the only quarrel we ever had.”14 Lillie, who had come to London with just one plain black dress, patronized the fashion houses of Worth and Doucet. Her evening gowns were embroidered with pearls, her tea gowns bordered with silver fox, her dressing gowns lined with ermine. For a ball at Marlborough House, Lillie appeared in a confection of yellow tulle over which a gold net held preserved butterflies of various sizes and colors. In the 1890s Edward’s second official mistress, Daisy Warwick, never paid less than five thousand dollars in today’s money for a gown, often far more. Society columns gushed about the “violet velvet with two splendid turquoise-and-diamond brooches in her bodice” she wore to a ball; the “gauzy white gown beneath which meandered delicately shaded ribbons” she wore to a dinner party; the “splendid purple-grape-trimmed robes and veil of pearls on white” she wore to a drawing room.15 More expensive—and certainly less rewarding than the mistress’s own bodily glorification—was the management of a large household of retainers and servants. In the 1590s Gabrielle d’Estrées managed a household consisting of eighty-three ladies and gentlemen, seventeen crown officials, and more than two hundred servants. This large tribe of hangers-on needed to be fed, housed, paid a salary, and in some cases clothed. A portion of the mistress’s cash went to maintain the ultimate status symbol of centuries past: a magnificent coach. The mistress needed to keep her coach in good order—fresh paint and gilding on the outside, plush upholstery and plump pillows on the inside. The carriage was pulled by horses which she needed to feed and stable. In addition, she had to pay the staff that looked after them. Madame de Montespan, the proud owner of a luxurious carriage drawn by six horses, was flabbergasted to see her younger rival, the teenage Mademoiselle de Fontanges, drive by in a grander carriage pulled by eight horses. The mistress arranged entertainments for the king, often lavish ones, where she paid not only for food, cooks, and waiters but for actors, singers, musicians, theatrical sets, costumes, and fireworks. In 1671, for instance, as a token of her gratitude for being created a duchess, Louise de Kéroualle gave a dinner for the entire English court.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Also, I had to chuckle when I read a sentence in a book on critical thinking that said, "Of course, we all know when we read something that we don't have to believe every bit of it." I felt like stomping my feet in anger-in the cult, I always had to believe every bit of it. Those of us who were born in COG were treated particularly harshly. A lot was expected of us. It didn't matter that we had been selling literature on the street since we could toddle about; nor did it matter how hard we worked as we got older. We were relentlessly told how ungrateful we were for the sacrifices our parents' generation had made to give us this way of life. We were exhorted to become more thankful, willing, humble, spiritual, sacrificial, and so on. Of course, we were considered to be in this for life. We were treated like public property, with no room for individuality. The climate of the large "teen homes" was army-like. They even called it an army, a boot camp. I would think to myself, "Not even soldiers stay in boot camp for years on end!" Even when we were living in a community with our parents, emphasis was placed on firm discipline, and "delinquent" parents were punished. Because parents were judged by their children's behavior, parents could sometimes be harsher to us than our "teen shepherds." As a result, I now feel it is so important to always treat people, including oneself, as the German philosopher Immanuel Kant said: as an end in themselves and never simply as a means. When young people leave a cult, they need autonomy, including the right to make their own mistakes. Personal dignity and autonomy are the basic rights each person has by virtue of being human. These rights are overridden when others decide to use influence, pressure, or whatever to get you to do what they supposedly know is best for you. The experiences I had in the cult make it difficult to trust people, especially if they are paternalistic. They may mean well, may think they know what is best, and may work to help me to avoid what they feel would be pitfalls, but they should realize that if I am to recover from the cult, I cannot be expected to continue in the cult modes. For example, it is exceptionally difficult for me to sit still, look attentive and receptive, and listen to drawnout lectures. When I feel caged in, or if people are being intrusive about what is truly my business, I feel my lungs will explode. I clench my teeth, and my ears ring. I was never allowed to show anger, and I still generally keep it in, which leads me to behave toward myself in ways I don't wantto. But when I do express anger, I feel so guilty I usually run to apologize and do whatever is wanted of me.