The Angry Book [Paperback]

Don't get even -- get mad, and get over it!
When your love life is boring, maybe you don't fight enough? When sex leaves a person cold, is frozen anger the problem? If you work too much, eat too much, drink too much, is it because you are afraid to get mad? Did you ever think of your anger as something constructive?
When you lose your temper honestly, it can be good for you. In this perennially bestselling book, eminent psychiatrist and bestselling author Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin shows how one of the most powerful human emotions can change your life. Suppressed or twisted anger can lead to anxiety, depression, insomnia, psychosomatic illness, alcoholism, frigidity, impotence, and downright misery. But understanding and releasing anger can lead to greater health, happiness, and emotional wholeness.
Let Dr. Rubin show you how to be what you are: a human being.Theodore Isaac Rubin, M.D.,has served as president of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis and is the author of thirty books, includingCompassion and Self-Hate, Lisa and David, Jordi, The Winner's Notebook,andLisa and David Today.His books have been translated all over the world. He lives and practices psychiatry in New York City.Chapter 1

BEGINNINGS

In this section I want to describe some general considerations as well as some of the beginnings or origins of angry troubles.

Even the Saints

I assume the saints were human. I assume you are not a saint. All human beings get angry -- and I'm sure the saints did, too. Feeling angry is a universal human phenomenon. It is as basic as feeling hungry, lonely, loving, or tired. The capacity to feel angry and to respond in some way to that feeling is in us from birth. Have you ever seen a newborn baby cry and scream and get red with rage? He does so usually in response to some increase in bodily tension or discomfort or frustration -- the need for food or relief from the stick of a diapel³: