Psychology and Pedagogy of AngerRichardson, Roy Franklin
Science
Psychology and Pedagogy of Anger
Richardson, Roy Franklin
Anger
There is much in the expression of anger in both the subjective and
objective reaction to the emotion whose impulsive aim is merely to
release unpleasant feeling tension, to clear the mental atmosphere, so
to speak. A brief resumé of the reactive consciousness to anger will
illustrate. First on the feeling side there occurs a mental situation
accompanied by a tendency to expression in order to remove or modify the
situation. Irritation may be relieved or turned into pleasantness by the
reaction. Lowered self-feeling may be restored with extra compensation
in pleasurable feelings of victory, if the reaction has been successful.
Second, the expression of anger involves restraint, the cruder unsocial
tendencies are controlled and others are substituted of a less
objectionable and offensive nature. By both objective and subjective
reactions, devices of disguise, transfer and modification of the
unsocial pugnacious tendencies may allow the restraint to be released
and the emotive tendency fully satisfied, in which a feeling of
pleasantness follows. Third, the reaction which has been fully
satisfactory from the feeling side, is followed by a partial or complete
immunity against the recurrence of the anger from the same mental
situation, as the successful reaction has removed the mental situation
from which the emotion arose.
Anger from the point of view stated above, touches upon the second
educational aim. So large a part of the reactive consciousness to anger
is motivated to find a successful surrogate for cruder and unsocial
tendencies which are objectional, that this side of anger expression is
educationally important. It is a desirable personal equipment to have
strong potentialities of anger. However there should be a mentality
which is versatile and active enough by training and habit to react
successfully to the emotion, in the first place to use such reservoirs
of energy for work, and second, to react satisfactorily from the
feeling-side, where the instinctive tendencies are restrained, and break
up morbid and unpleasant mental tension which may be an inference.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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