On WNYC April 1, Leonard Lopate discusses the roots and consequences of anger with Dr. Philip Muskin, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, and Dr. Howard Kassinove, Professor of Psychology and Director, Institute for the Study and Treatment of Anger and Aggression.

Listen to the podcast:

Here are my notes:

• fear and anger are closely intertwined–central to our fight or flight response
• anger can be constructive, protecting, motivating righting wrongs
• the same trigger, eg. someone taking our parking place, can be perceived and responded to differently on different days, by different people.  do we, cognitively, perceive the triggering event as a threat or an annoyance?
• our brains our wired (nature & nurture) and some people are better at controlling impulses than others
• if you are sad or depressed, everything may feel like a threat to you
• alcohol can have that same effect
• anger is different from aggression.  anger, the emotion, has components of ideas about how bad things are, ideas about revenge.  where aggression is the behavior, the action.  in one of the doctor’s studies:  only 10% of anger events are followed by an aggressive action, but most aggressive action is proceeded with anger.
• people with high self esteem become angry–not people with low self esteem
• Alzheimer’s: “some people get angrier than they usually were” … the way the brain talks to itself is destroyed by Alzheimer’s, so, for example, the patient may loose some of their ability to control, moderate their response
• bipolar and anger relationship? anger is a component of a wide variety of disorders, including bipolar, but the linkage is unclear right now
• anger management: listener asks about children’s temper tantrum? … “you let them grow up”
• anger is part of who we are.  as we mature we learn to regulate anger’s intensity, duration, and frequency… so that we can become productive members of society.  who teaches us? parents, cartoons, friends, teachers, religious institutions.
• repression: catharsis is not a good idea, can amplify the emotion … no good to hold it in or to punch it out … the solution is “verbal assertion” … “communicate assertively”
• internet (because the other person is not right in front of you) is so impersonal that it makes it possible for people to express things inappropriately