| Last night I went to:
March 7 Revisioning Women's Anger: Jean Baker Miller, MD
The Personal and the Global & Janet Surrey, PhD
Stone Center and
McLean Hospital
From my notes:
Anger could take on a different quality i the hands of women.
Anger is often linked with aggression; they propose a separation of the emotion
of anger from the destructive actions of aggression that often accompany it in
this culture. Aggression can and does exist without anger (for example,
dropping a nuclear bomb).
Standard psychiatric theory states that everyone develops only in relationships
[I wasn't able to take references - Mez].
Anger is an inevitable part of relationships. When connections are given their
full and primary values, anger can be part of the _movement_ in relationships.
Anger is the emotion we feel when something is wrong, something hurts. It acts
against wrong treatment of us. It is a survival instinct. Babies who are not
taken care of, get angry, and cry louder, for example. We need to feel that
we have an impact on the people we are in relationships with, and that we are
heard. Anger is the emotional response when this does not happen.
We feel mixtures of feelings, other hurtful feelings with anger.
Aggressive behavior can be used to substitute for anger, and to circumvent the
vulnerability we feel when we are angry. Or, indirect expressions of anger,
such as "complaints" about sources of pain that are not the true or important
source of the pain causing the anger.
In "growth fostering relationships" we need to be safe to express and listen to
anger. Mutuality helps. Much practice in expressing anger is needed. And we
also need to hear and receive anger as the message it is. We can "encompass
anger with much greater ease, and even some zest".
The goal of anger is to be _better_ connected. It is a powerful emotion.
We can try to integrate love and anger. Janet referenced a [Central American?]
song called "A Revolutionary Lullaby".
One client did not want to focus on the anger caused by being a woman, because
it caused her to displace that anger into anger and conflict in her marriage.
The notion that a therapist should not work with a client when they are
emotionally impacted was challenged.
Notes from the Question and Answer period:
Dominance in a relationship is incompatible with authenticity. This was based
on a question about expressing anger in a relationship with an imbalance of
power, such as financial dependence.
Emotions are not considered to be legitimate communication.
There is a group for clients who have been abused by their therapists. It is
called TELL - Therapy Exploitation Link Line. It's number is 964-TELL [I
presume 617 area code], and they meet the second Friday of every month.
Send "I messages" is a technique for displaying anger in an imbalanced
relationship, or if one is a member of an ethnic group, such as White
Anglo-Saxon Protestants, which tend to sweep everything under the rug. You
speak directly and only to your own experience, such as "I feel sad".
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| Yeah, my notes don't do it nearly justice. There was a lot of jargon (real
therapists can get some sort of job credits for going to these lectures).
> re.1 >Emotions are not considered to be legitimate communication
> Was that a question or an answer ?
An interesting statement, during the Q&A session, from one of the members of
the panel. It was couched as a statement about how our culture works that is
incorrect. It directly applies to the theory that anger is really a way to
communicate the message - there's something wrong, and I'd like us to work on
it.
> Seems to me that *saying* "You have made me angry" or "I get angry
> when you do x" is much better than striking out in anger.
Oh yeah. It would definately be a way to tease apart anger and agression, and
it seems like it would be reasonably simple to train people in, for instance,
my major relationships, that saying that means "and I'd like to interact with
you to work on what has hurt me and what might be done about it".
> Or do men and women tend to use one or another of these methods ?
> (Wouldn't surprise me.)
In fact, I leave out from the notes that the agression-to-cover-anger tacit was
mainly attributed to males, and the indirected-"complaints" to females.
Mez
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