SUCCESSFUL DISAPPEARANCE
The success with which the emotion of anger disappears is a matter of wide individual difference with the persons studied. With some the reporting of the emotion from the introspection notes tended to reinstate the emotion. One subject was frequently disturbed by the reappearance of the emotion during the report. In one instance he refused to report to the writer for three days afterward. He reports he could not recall the situation without the reappearance of the anger in its unpleasant form. Other persons could rarely reinstate an emotion in any unpleasant form over night. At times the anger was reinstated in its pleasant aspect. Sometimes a feeling of exaltation was displayed. The subject showed he enjoyed recalling the emotion. Imagined and carefully devised schemes of retaliation were often rehearsed with pleasure. Again the observation would be a feeling of indifference, as something past and finished. Often the statement was given, “The whole thing seems ludicrous and amusing to me now.”
It is rather pleasing to recall the situation exciting anger when the original emotion is short-circuited, as it were, allowing a pleasurable, gossipy vituperation against the offender without the initially unpleasant stage of anger. In fact the subject may re-experience a little of the unpleasant humiliation through imaginative stimulus, if the pleasantly reactive stage is successful enough to compensate. If the subject is aware he has a sympathetic hearer, it is far easier to pass over the initially unpleasant stage of the reinstated anger and enjoy a hostile, gossipy reaction. The writer in the course of the study became so intimately acquainted with the private emotional life of the subjects studied and had been a sympathetic listener of the emotional experiences so long, that after the period of observation had ended, he would find himself the recipient of emotional confidences which the subjects took pleasure in relating to him. Says one on reporting, “I really was not interested so much in the scientific side of this emotion as I was to tell you of my resentment, and as I look over it now, I am really aware that I assumed a scientific interest as a means of gaining full sympathy and giving me full freedom to speak everything in mind.” Another subject says, “I went to tell X. for I believed he would get angry too and I hoped that he would.” The same situation does not usually allow anger to continue to reappear in its unpleasant form, for repeated appearance tends to eliminate the active unpleasant stage.
An emotion of anger which has been unsuccessfully expressed may continue to reappear in consciousness again and again. Crowded out, it will suddenly return at times by chance associations. It may become so insistent that it is an unpleasant distraction from business affairs and the subject must find some sort of reaction to satisfy it. F. observes, “I could not do my work. Just as I would get started, the idea would reappear suddenly and I would find myself angry, tending to think cutting remarks and planning what I should do. Each time I tried to escape from it, it would come back again. Finally I determined deliberately to get rid of it. I recalled all the good qualities of X., what favors he had bestowed upon me and in fact felt quite friendly toward him. Before I had finished, the anger had disappeared and did not return. Later, as I recalled the situation incidentally, I felt indifferent toward it.” Such deliberate behavior is unusual. The reaction to an emotion is mostly involuntary. In many instances, when emotion is prolonged, it is much like a trial and error process, one reaction after another is tried out in imagination until a rather successful one is found. This reappearance of an emotion when it has been repressed gives opportunity for a new trial and mode of attack.
There are two general conditions under which anger disappears most successfully. First, if the mental situation from which anger arises is changed directly by the addition of a new idea that gives an entirely new meaning content to the incident so that it will no longer be humiliating or irritating, as when the subject can thoroughly come to believe that the motives of the opponent’s offense were not hostile but friendly, anger disappears rather successfully with no unpleasant after effects; the anger is cut off directly at its source. To illustrate, C.’s anger at X. which had been a source of unpleasant disturbance for two days, completely disappeared when he was finally informed that what X. did was not meant as personal. The subject at times finds himself trying to assume a little of the attitude of make-believe. He really wants to believe the offender meant well. A second successful condition for the removal of anger is when the subject reacts so that he feels he has fully mastered his opponent. He has given full restitution for the offense and feels a pleasureable satisfaction in the results. Feeling is an essential factor, whatever the method employed. If a feeling of complete victorious satisfaction is accomplished in connection with the disappearance of anger it is usually successful. The circumstances are rare in which the direct verbal or physical attack would be fully satisfactory. A substitution in the form of hostile wit, teasing, irony, or it may be a favor bestowed with a hostile intent, may accomplish the same result as far as feelings are concerned and completely satisfy the anger. The imagined victory, or a make-believe one, may serve the same purpose.
The most unsuccessful condition for the disappearance of anger is one commonly used in emergencies—that of changing the attention and avoiding the offensive idea. Intense anger usually returns when diminished in this manner. The attitude of indifference and over-politeness usually serves only as a temporary device of removal for the purpose of expeditious control. Mere repression is not always most successful.