Psychology and Pedagogy of AngerRichardson, Roy Franklin
Science
Psychology and Pedagogy of Anger
Richardson, Roy Franklin
Anger
A second point of which the writer is convinced, is that in order to
study the emotions, especially the deep seated primary emotions like
fear and anger, it is necessary to take into account the finer working
of the emotion in its feeling and impulsive stage of development and
disappearance. In fact, the milder tenuous emotions of anger are
markedly important from the educational side as well as psychologically.
The normal function of the emotion is better exemplified in the less
intense experiences. Anger, as it is usually thought of, is the emotion
in its excited uncontrolled stage. Anger, sublimated into keener
intellectual and willed action, is no less anger though its affective
side is less intense; its reactive side is working in better accord with
the evolutionary function of the emotion,—to intensify action in a
needed direction. In fact, affective processes of indignation,
resentment and irascible feelings which are not called anger in the
popular sense, from the scientific side should be considered a part of
the anger consciousness. They have the feeling fore-stage of humiliation
and an intellectual reaction; the residuum of the affective process has
every mark of that victorious satisfaction, which is typical of anger.
Such tenuous emotions are reported to have far reaching results in
mental behavior and personal development. One subject, resentful at an
implication against the value of his work, considers that it stimulated
him to increased determined action and intensified endeavor for several
months in order to show the offender he was wrong. A., resentful of X.’s
adverse suggestion, put in three days of severe intellectual labor to
prove his point. E. observes that a humiliation and mild resentment was
a keen stimulus to his ambition. His ambitious behavior, he considers
was accompanied by increased friendliness toward the offender. The
question was privately put to a number of persons as to the effects of
resentment on some of their ambitions in the past. Every person who was
asked, after a careful recall, was able to find one and some times
several instances of important results of anger of this kind. Some
persons from early childhood have habitually reacted to little
resentments to beat the offender in an ambitious way. One person with
defective eyes early became sensitive about it. Any implication against
his defect was always reacted to, he says, by saying to himself, “I will
show you I can do more with poor eyes than you can with good ones, and
you will be sorry some day.” M. 28—“Resentful because the parents of a
lady to whom I was paying attention did not approve of me, I determined
to make so much of myself that they would be sorry. It was one of the
main incentives to my entering on a career. With this aim I went to the
University; I worked hard with success. Many times during the year I
would recall the incident and would resolve again and again to show them
some day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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