Week of April 10, 2002

Anger can be the most natural emotion in the world... and the most destructive. In "Anger" we explore the differences between constructive and destructive forms of anger, talk with a comedian and Academy Award winning actress about anger on stage, hear about the Tibetan Buddhist perspective on anger, and reflect on the role that this explosive emotion plays in ongoing struggles in the Middle East. Guests include comedian Lewis Black; author and psychiatrist Dr. Norman Rosenthal, professor of clinical psychiatry at Georgetown University; Academy and Tony Award-winning actress Mercedes Ruehl, now playing a spurned wife in Edward Albee's new play, "The Goat: Or who is Sylvia?" and Dr. Robert Thurman, professor of religion at Columbia University and president of New York City's Tibet House. Commentary by John Hockenberry focuses on what may be the world's angriest spot, the Middle East.

In an introductory essay, host Dr. Fred Goodwin points out that neuroscientists for a long time shied away from studying emotions. Unlike the tidier field of cognition, emotions are messy and hard to quantify. The emotions are "more of a soup than a salad," says Dr. Goodwin. Anger can meld with sadness, fear, and love. But even the apparently more cut-and-dried topics in neuroscience eventually relate to the emotions. What we think about anything is modulated by how we feel about it. It's a rich field for research, he concludes. If you really want to know how the human mind works, you can't ignore the emotions.

In the show's first interview, The Infinite Mind's Bill Lichtenstein interviews a man who makes a living being angry ... and being funny about it, comedian Lewis Black. He gets angry about cell phones, about Starbucks, about taxes... and it's all grist for the mill. "In comedy, what makes your humor is point of view," says Black. "And my point of view is infused with anger." Was Lewis Black always this angry? "I was a colicky baby," he admits. He says that the reason audiences relate to his angry humor is that they're angry too. "We all sit on it. People are basically pissed off... From the moment we're put into a structured environment with someone who has no concept of what power is --which is the delegation of power to someone else -- that's when anger begins." Definitely something to think about while filling out forms for the Internal Revenue Service.

Lewis Black appears this week on Comedy Central in a special: "Lewis Black: Taxed Beyond Belief!" and every Wednesday night on Comedy Central in "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." To learn more about "Taxed Beyond Belief!" and Lewis Black's upcoming performances, to contact him or to buy his CD "The White Album," visit Lewis Black.net. or Comedy Central.

Not everyone can make a living being funny about what ticks them off, as Lewis Black does, but humor can be a healthy way for anyone to deal with anger, says psychiatrist Dr. Norman Rosenthal, whom Dr. Fred Goodwin interviews next. Dr. Rosenthal is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School. His most recent book is The Emotional Revolution, published by Kensington Press.

Dr. Rosenthal calls anger and other emotions "limbic news" because the limbic system is the part of the brain that conveys emotion. Anger tells you that something's wrong. But when anger explodes into rage, it becomes unhealthy. People with perpetually hostile, "Type A" personalities are likely to die significantly earlier in life than their mellower peers. Aside from its effects on relationships, anger corrodes the arteries and leads to heart disease. Situations that are likely to trigger rage attacks in vulnerable individuals include traffic snarls and school bullying. Rage attacks are also related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and to experiences of being shamed and taunted on a regular basis in childhood. Animals, like people, can demonstrate anger. Monkeys who grow up in very erratic foraging conditions - "feast or famine" - become very hostile in adolescence. The part of the brain that's most involved with anger and rage is the amygdala. When this part of the brain is stimulted in cats, it provokes rage circuits and the cat becomes intensely hostile. The prefrontal cortex is part of the brain that governs executive functions, normally exercising a restraining influence over our emotional reactions. People given to rage attacks have been found to have unusually small prefrontal cortices.

Men are more likely than women to have problems with anger and anger management, whereas women are more likely to become depressed. But "venting" anger by yelling or punching a pillow isn't a good way to manage it. "The idea that 'let it all hang out, ventilate your anger to get rid of it is completely false," says Rosenthal. In studies, children who were encouraged to express their anger by hitting a doll with a baseball bat only became angrier. He says the first step towards anger management is recognizing when anger has become a significant problem. He recommends that a person with anger problems become aware of the patterns behind what sets off his or her rage. It's useful to keep a notebook in which you note your level of anger on a scale of 1-100 at different times of the day and the circumstances, says Dr. Rosenthal. Be willing to challenge your assumptions. If you think "Why should I be stuck in traffic ... how could this be happening to me?" ask yourself, "Well, why not? Everybody gets stuck in traffic!" or use humor to find a new way of looking at the situation. For calming down, Dr. Rosenthal also recommends deep, abdominal breathing, a practice drawn from yoga. It simulates the vagus nerve and the sympathetic nervous system.

Dr. Rosenthal stresses that the emotions are often linked. If one is attacked, one might feel anger and fear together. People who are depressed are sometimes also angry. Couples who fight demonstrate how anger and love are often closely linked, says Rosenthal, pointing to the couple in Edward Albee's play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

To contact Dr. Norman Rosenthal or learn more about his work, visit his web site. or write to him at 11110 Stephalee Lane Rockville, Maryland 20852. Click here to order Dr. Norman Rosenthal's new book, The Emotional Revolution, published by Kensington Press.

Next, The Infinite Mind's Emily Fisher talks with Academy Award winning and Tony Award winning actress Mercedes Ruehl about how anger is mixed with love and grief in the part she's now playing on Broadway, in Edward Albee's new play, "The Goat; or Who is Sylvia?" As Dr. Rosenthal points out, Edward Albee's classic, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" features a very angry couple. "The Goat" focuses on a couple who, if anything, are in even deeper trouble, architect Martin Gray (played by Bill Pullman) and his wife, Stevie (Mercedes Ruehl). The problem is, Martin has fallen in love... with a goat. And Stevie's angry... very angry (judging by the amount of pottery that Ruehl smashes over the course of the play). What makes Stevie the angriest is first of all, the breakdown of the exclusivity of her relationship with her husband, and secondly his failure to understand why she is appalled. "Love -- when it meets with an obstacle on the way to its object -- can be transformed into a negative manifestation: rage, vengeance, anger or grief. But the essential informing energy is love," says Ruehl.

But what about the goat? Why a goat? In Ruehl's estimation, the goat represents the area of taboo that a culture forbids. "But imagine going into that area of taboo and encountering a numinous experience... an exeprience with God... and then having to go back to your family and society and still stay true to the experience." Yes, well, that's when the vases begin to fly. "This is a play about a goat the way 'Moby Dick' is about a whale," says Ruehl. "On one level it's a play about a man who falls in love with a goat and it's very funny. But it's like a Thurber cartoon that takes a turn into Greek tragedy."

To contact Mercedes Ruehl, write to her care of The John Golden Theater, 252 West 45th Street; New York, NY 10036. Click here to order tickets for The Goat or Who is Sylvia?

Next, Dr. Fred Goodwin interviews renowned Buddhist scholar Dr. Robert Thurman. Dr. Thurman is professor of religion at Columbia University; president of New York City's Tibet House; and a former Tibetan Buddhist monk. Buddhism offers a good, lucid, analystic understanding of how the mind works and psychology, says Thurman. As for anger, according to Tibetan Buddhism, anger never helps, but the alternative to getting angry is not being steamrolled passively, but rather taking forceful action. Anger stems from a distroted sense of identification of the self as separate from others, which makes the self feel assualted and confrontational. "Not that I'm Mr. Peaceful by any means," says Thurman, who says anger is still a problem he works on. "Anger gives you energy, yes," he says, "but it makes you lose control of how you use that anger." Even when anger seems to have helped one to deal with a difficult situation, in retrospect, one can usually see that by recognizing the signals earlier one might have gotten out of the situation earlier, better, and more coolly.

To learn more about Dr. Robert Thurman's work or to contact him at Columbia University, click here. Or visit Tibet House's web site to learn more about Tibet House. To order any of Dr. Robert Thurman's books click here. Or you can write to him at 623 Kent Hall, Columbia University New York, NY 10027.

"Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arrafat. For more than two decades they've been settling a score. With each other. With their own people. Thousands have died." Concluding the show on "Anger," is commentary from John Hockenberry on what may be the angriest spot in the world. Hockenberry lived in Jerusalem in the late 1980s. He recalls an incident he observed once near the Damascus gate, in a tear-gassed market. The Israeli army had come to round up the perpetrators after a stone throwing incident. The stone throwers had long since disappeared, but they had to round up someone. One little boy carrying a box of fresh eggs in a square carton arrived to find his produce-selling father being taken away. His father was shoved into a van. Hockenbery recalls seeing the boy's face and observing "the seed sprout: anger." He concludes, "Anger is all that remains of those moments but it is more than enough… channeled, nurtured, captured in the reservoirs of political cowardice in Israel and Palestine it can be unleashed at will by the likes of Sharon and Arafat to settle their own personal score."

-- Emily Fisher

 

 

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