The first time I read this book I thought that I was beginning the process of learning everything about anger (and everything else). Having read this a second time, I realize that what separates Dr. Ellis from psychoanalysis is that he’s not really about superhuman knowledge. (Tangent: that’s possibly the worst argument of the atheists—well, if you can’t explain the problem of evil to me, then shoo, shoo! Is that science, that we’re entitled to know things? Isn’t the first task of science to delineate what we do not, or even cannot, know? Isn’t that the worst mistake of religion, when divested of humility, to feel entitled to superhuman knowledge? Okay, break’s over.) He does present important, transformational ideas that are sufficiently counterintuitive that I’m not going to try to summarize them in three lines. But one of the “myths about anger” Ellis describes is essentially that it is not cured by Knowing Alone—think about it, you could be stewing.

At the same time, Ellis in his outlook and style is very classical.

But if instead of “living your life”, as people like to say, if instead of taking only that analysis which is needed, or at least supportable, before taking action necessary to change, if instead of this you simply try to satiate an unquenchable thirst for “knowing”, an almost sexual obsession with superhuman knowledge, then you lose yourself; you’re lost. I’ll spare you the references to the Apostle Paul, but they are there—in the Bible, I mean—if that’s something you’re curious about, and I think in a way it is that sort of thing, even though Dr Ellis wasn’t religious.

As for the recommendations Dr. Ellis makes, I’d like to provide the simplest of sketches, truly, without caricaturing it through lack of skill. Here, then, are the headings in Chapter 13, “Additional Ways of Reducing Your Anger”, not explained but simply listed as a sort of sample:

—review the practical results of anger
—increasing frustration tolerance
—attacking narcissism and grandiosity
—awareness of the harm of anger and violence
—challenging angry attributions
—reducing your feelings of inadequacy
—avoidance of drugs and alcohol
—a philosophy of fallibility
—curbing righteous indignation
—recognizing the irony of hatred
—acquiring humanistic values
—realizing the pain of your opponents
—enhancing your relationships
—cooperative outlook
—workshops, training courses, and psychotherapy

That’s fifteen points; naturally everyone won’t like them all equally. But it gives you a sense of his style, a sense of what I begin to understand that I do not fully understand.

Two points he discusses in different parts of the book (the second in different ways in different places) that I took away from it were: the tension/relaxation exercises, and being reminded of a certain doubt of our ideas and judgments.

………….

After-thought: To be a little more ‘special than Al, but hey—and I’ll try to avoid specifics because Not being angry at people often irritates almost as much as firing back—but I find that usually when you’re angry you’re angry at some negative front that the person has, which is worse than they really are but which they don’t really have the guts or whatever to live up/down to, right: and basically the whole situation is a result of them not knowing who they are, and you misreading the label they printed, right.

(shrugs) So yeah.

Subject: The problem with anger is that when you get it, you don’t think that something’s wrong; you’re doing a great job. And yet you won’t relax, either— those other people.

Book: Albert Ellis in general does a great job, and this book is no exception.