U^D

Journal theC.G.J*g Foundation of forAnalytical Puy.holo6y

FEAR OF THE FEMININE Erich Neumann Anger as Inner Transfbrmation Stephen Mani n A.

Thc HcalingNightmarc: A Study of the War Dreams of Victnam CombatVcterans Harry A. Wilmer

REVIEWS Donald E. Kalsched. Patricia Finley . Sherry L. Salman Alan M. Jones. BarbaraKoltuv

SPRING 1986

$10

ANGER AS INNER TRANSFORMATION

SrepHeN Menrn A.

oF especially a fearfulexperience as THE IMIoRTANCE angerfor thepsyche. I capableof destroyingthe forward movementof life, is no new discovery . The Latin scholars and poets Senecaand Plutarch wrote extensively on anger.rln more recent times, Averill reports that about 90 years ago the eminent American psychologistG. S. Hall collated from his researchon emotion some2200 descriptions angry states.2 of Today the various schools of psychology are busy dissectinganger and counselinghow to deal with it, how to get rid of it, and how to use it. Given that angeris a basic,human experience, is time for a Jungianassessment an appreciation anger's it and of vital role in the processof inner transformationcalled individuation. In my clinical work I have come to see an essentialdichotomy in the archetypalcomplex of anger. This dichotomy has opposingdimensionsof intrapsychicexperience.One aspectof this dichotomy is characterized by a seething,red-hot emotionality that pumps blood into our facesand hands and pushesus ever closer toward impulsive and regrettableacting-out. Its complementis a quite different hardnessof heart, a disturbing stillnessof icy emotionalwithdrawal that shutsus down and in, trappingus in fantasies of revengeand passiveaggression. Despitetheir obvious differences,these opposingstatessharea secretrelationship. There are a number of other significant markers on the road to understanding anger.It becomes increasingly clearto me that within the archetypal SrBpnnN Mnnrn, Psy.D.is a Jungian A. analyst a clinicalpsychologist and living andworkingin the Philadelphia area.He is a facultymember the C. G. Jung of lnstitutein New York City and a clinical assistant professor teaching the art in therapy clinicalpsychology and graduate programs Hahnemann at University. 31

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One is rage, complex of anger are two different psychologicalexperiences. typautomaticallyand unconsciously, an instinctivereactionwhich happens to ically in response someperceivedthreat. The other is anger, a conscious feeling state which has about it a senseof judgment, choice, and differsomething entiation. Rage overwhelmsthe ego, while anger communicates the vital and essential it. The passionof rage obliterates symbolic process to and blurs boundariesbetween ourselvesand others. Anger, on the other and an appreciationof intrapsychic hand, leads to greater self-awareness dynamics and interpersonalrelationships.Yet anger and rage are related through a processof psychologicaltransformation.Rage is the instinctive basisof anger,while angeris the humanized,symbolic image of rage which as evolvesin ego consciousness a resultof reflectionupon and understanding the rageful state.This reflection may include affective, cognitive (or ideational), and imaginal elements. are marker is that angerand aggression not identical A secondessential psychologically,as Senecanoted when he wrote: whether thosewho are habitually . . . this point must now be considered, cruelandrejoicein humanblood areangrywhentheykill peoplefrom whom they have neither receivedinjury nor think . . . that they have received it for one. . this is not anger,it is brutality; it doesnot harmbecause has is in to received injury. . . . its purpose desiring beatandmangle not vengeancebut pleasure. or Angry and enragedpeoplemost certainly may be aggressive sadistic,but they are not implicitly so.3 Furthermore,researchshows that the disinhibited catharsisof rageful and/or aggressive feelings does little to eliminate or transform rage into anger.aIn fact, wholesale catharsisis more likely to lead to feelings of self-image.This findthan to enhanced and depression lowered self-esteem ing is in direct contrastto what will be outlined below; that is, that anger as a conscious feeling greatly enhancesone's sense of self. Ironically, itself as a mode of handling rage. Nothing changes, catharsisperpetuates and to make matters worse, such catharsis may even intensify our rageful of feelings. Repetitiveexpressions thoughtlessrage do little except to trap cycle of tension release,conditioning us to become one in an unconscious more rageful, more often, more easily. Rage remains instinctual, or in because there is no room for conJungianterms, an archetypalpossession, sciousreflection on the symbolic meaning embeddedwithin it. Rage does not becomehumanizedinto anger. A third significant marker is that anger and depressionare not mirror imagesof one another.Depressionis not simply the hackneyedpsychoanalytic truism of "anger turned inward." Depressionmay indeed emerge in when anger is unsuccessful averting obstaclesthat stand in the way of just like anger, may also be a learnedcoping strategy life, yet depression, One's of the kind outlinedby Seligmanin his work on learnedhelplessness.s

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choice of coping strategiesmay depend upon cultural, constitutional, or even archetypalfactors. Moreover, I have discoveredthrough careful clinical questioningthat most patients are able to differentiate the rageful state from the feeling of to literally choose remainin rageor permit angerand. with few exceptions, reflection in order to transformthis raw material into anger.This decisionmaking process,which can occur in a split-second,I have chosento define Varying among individas the moment of greateror lesserconsciousness. uals, it may be terribly short or comfortably long. Thereforebetweenaction and reaction there is a psychic spaceand time when a person choosesto becomeknowingly involved to whateverextent possiblein his or her own of feeling life. It is almost as if rage has within itself the consciousness its of own transformation, transmitted to the ego by the awareness this moment of choice. Supportiveof this notion is the ancient wisdom that by avoiding the ventilationand completedenial, to two extremeresponses rage, unrestrained this emotional state will cool and clarify into anger, completewith differThis natural imagery, ideas,and interpretations. entiatedthoughts,fantasies, gaining distanceand achievingdifferentiation processis ego consciousness from rageful emotional arousal. This distancingand cooling is the natural groundwork for rage's transformationinto anger. The cooling processthat transmutesrage's heat into the meaningful, consciousexperienceof anger dependsupon self-reflection.Self-reflection facilitatescommunicationamong our various inner parts and betweenourof selvesand others.Because the connectivequality of self-reflection.anger can becomea creativeexperience,bringing togetherhitherto splitoff parts or split-apartpeople. As such, anger is fundamentally erotic, helping to bind what has not yet been bound and helping to know what has not yet been known. One more point must be raised:What are the origins of the rage/anger spectrum?The answersreveal a great diversity of opinion. Some experts and patientsascribeits origin to frustrationand stress,othersto deprivation and injustice. Here is how I see it: Born as rage, anger arises whenever individuation, that innate urge towards self-realization,is blocked or constrictedin any seriousway. Rageeruptsas a symptomof this inner splitness, this pain of exile from oneself and the other, in the form of emotional revenge.In the transforwithholding, righteousindignation, or passionate the psyche's urge for personalcompletion and mation of rage into anger meaningfulrelationshipto one's inner centerand to the lives of othersmakes itself known.

THE MWH IN ANGER"S ?RAT/SFORMATION angerhasmany symbolicimages, Like any complexhumanexperience, but one mytheme is strikingly congruent to the basic facts about anger

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outlined above: anger's distinctiveness from rage, the two implicit energy flows within the archetypalcomplex of anger,the needfor containmentand reflectionif rageis to transforminto anger,and anger'sfundamentally erotic character. That congruent mytheme is the story of two irascible and argumentativebrothers, sons of Hera, lovers of Aphrodite, and both fathersto Eros: the gods Ares and Hephaestus. As the Greek god of war, Ares displayed many qualities of the ragelanger spectrum,so that being enragedis said to be like being "on the warpath." Mythographers6 and poetsT alike saw little dignity in Ares and portrayed him asa detestable, bellicosebully. He hailedfrom ancientThrace, a land, says Robert Graves, that "made war a pastime."8 It was easy for the justice-loving classicalGreeks to prefer Athena's brand of aggression, presumablyundertakenin defenseof liberty, over Ares's, which was for the love of a good fight. Athena's warlikeness had aboutit an air of restraint and direction, while Ares seemedto become lost in impulsivenessand tumult. Even Zeus, who at times is recognizedas Ares's father, despised him for taking pleasure only in "warfare and discord."e More contemporary writers, such as the great mythographerWalter Otto, insult Ares by calling him a braggart,a passionate savage,and a bloodthirstypresence.ro Perhaps theseauthorsare unconsciously communicatingthe needto fear the god and the destructiveforce of unreflectedrage. A more balancedand complete picture of Ares's nature is hard to find. Little is recordedin myth about the god's childhood and youth. He is consistently presented Hera's son, usually said to have been spawnedby as her alone to competewith her philanderinghusband,Zeus, and his singlehandedproduction of Athena from his brow.rr As such, Ares is the child of Hera's rejectionby Zeus and the unmitigatedfury it causedher. To make mattersworse, Ares becamea threat to Zeus; some of Hera's earlier Titan natureresurfaced her son, reminding Zeus of the eternalenmity between in the race of proud giants and the Olympian immortals.12 With thesebeginnings the fate of Ares as divine outlaw and contentiousmisfit was assured. Yet there is evidenceof anotherside to this archetypalimage. Ares's namehas meaningfuletymologicalconnectionsto the ancientGreek words for "masculine" (arsen)and "masculine seed" and seemsrelatedto words meaning "lively movement," "to be enraged," "to race," and "to be stirred up."13 Thus described,the psychologicalstateof libido in the Ares configurationis, on the one hand, flowing and moving as the active masculine impregnator, and on the other, possessed the energies of the of disruptiveaggressor. When constellatedas an archetypalpattern in human behavior,Ares is capableof moving us dramaticallyand creativelyinto life. Another example of his beneficentside is found in the ancientGreek poem "Homeric Hymn to Ares."ra Here he is calledthe "father of victory, " "the helperof justice," and "the rampartof Olympus," all of which speak to his natureas a progressiveforce in life. One supplicates him in order to to be rid of the possessive rush of fury during the "chilling din of battle,"

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as if inherentin his archetypalconfigurationis the very oppositeof rageful, furious warlikeness.In Ares is the very capacity for inner restraint and transcendence over rage's impulsiveness and passion. The Etruscansand Romans also saw in Ares/Mars a more gentle sort of procreativity. To them this god fertilized everything from corn to vine, and they named the vernal month of March after him. Consideration the more positive qualitiesof Ares doesnot minimize of his love of war. Yet it is intriguing how Westernconsciousness chosen has to emphasizebut one aspectof this archetypalimage. This one-sidedness may reflect our culture's difficulty with a creativeappreciationof rage and anger. Rather than successfullyexploring rage and integratinganger's creative and connectivevalue through the exerciseof insight, we have learned to indulge in violence and meaninglessaggression.Such violence and aggression Ares untransformed, is and it is our task to containand transmute the instinctivepotentialthrough the attentiveinvolvementof consciousness. But what of the other player in this brotherly tandem,who is so central to anger's mystery?It was the lame Hephaestus, many talentedgod of the the forge, who fashioned the palaces and playthings of the Olympians. Despite his critical role, he does not fare much better than Ares at their hands or in the imaginations of the ancient Greek mythmakers. As the "quintessential fringe personon Olympus,"15 Hephaestus, like Ares, was a misfit and an outsider, especially despisedfrom the start by both Hera and Zeus. Like his brother, Hephaestus was said to have beenborn of Hera alone and to be yet another attempt to meet Zeus's challengein Athena. And again Hera's efforts were no match for her husband's success,for fatherless,deformed Hephaestus not enhanceHera's statureas Athena did had done for Zeus. Thus as an offspring of rage and incompleteness, Hephaestus came forth crippled and misshapen, with his feet on back-to-front. To rid herself of this embarrassment, Hera cast the defenseless infant from the ramparts of Olympus. The self-esteemof the orphaned Hephaestus plummeted along with his broken body to a deep depressionbeneaththe oceanwaves. Many of the storiesthat speakof Hephaestus his exploitsemphasize and his surly and vengeful nature. This is nowherebetter illustratedthan in his revengeon his mother. Deprived by his shamedparentof his paternity and rightful placeon Olympus, he retaliated tricking Hera with the anonymous by gift of a mysteriousgolden throne. Hera was delightedwith its beauty and innocently sat on it, whereuponher arms were bound by invisible shackles and the throne levitated into mid-air, leaving her turning in space,to the mirth of the other immortals.16 Only when promised ravishing Aphrodite as wife did Hephaestus releasehis mortified mother. Hephaestus also took revengeon Ares for cuckolding him with Aphrodite. Informed of this infidelity by Helios, the sun, Hephaestus fashioned a golden net "fine as a spider's web so that not even a god" could see it, and capturedthe lovers "in flagrantedelicto,"rT thus proving himself once again a brooding and clever adversary.'8

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His as Nevertheless, with Ares, there is another side to Hephaestus. nameis said to mean "fire,"re and he was called the "ruler of fire"-terms energyhis archetypalimage conthat speakto the powerful and passionate tains. His fire can transform raw or base material into things of sublime beauty and, in combination with Ares, forms the alchemical principle was "Mars," which to the greatalchemistParacelsus the fire that "quickens nature" and fuels the "great work of the opus" or of individuation.2o talent softenedhis role as hideous outTo some extent Hephaestus's sider.Therewas a greatdemandfor his beautifuland usefulcreations-servants made of gold and magnificentjewelry and armor in which entire universes came to life (such armor was made for Achilles).'' On Zeus's commandhe createdthe ill-starred Pandorain order to subvert and complicate the life prodastonishing of Prometheus and avengethe theft of fire. Hephaestus's ucts show the creative imagination that belongs to his archetypalpattern. in The Greekshonoredit in the "Homeric Hymn to Hephaestus,"22 which they sangabouthow he "taught men to work," and Boccaccioechoedthese sentiments calling Vulcan (the Latinized Hephaestus)"the foundation by "23 of civilization. When viewed as two sides of an archetypalimage of the instinctual in rage and anger, Ares and Hephaestusreveal a potential for creative reflect the psychological From our perspective, their natures transformation. possibility of transforming rage into anger, an accomplishmentthat has civilizing and humanizingeffects on the psyche as a whole. In order to ground these archetypalcharactersin human experience, one must ask how they manifest in our lives. The Ares in us is the fiery, its pulse of rage's passionate activeness, red-hot emotionality. At reddened his assertiveness times negativelyaggressive, energy is also the penetrating of creativechange.Ares and his libido disruptold valuesand rigid defenses, making way for newer, more fertile psychologicalattitudes.This is Ares the quickener, first destroyingwhat is worn-out and obstructive,and then renewingour senseof strengthand life. In so doing, Ares plantsus squarely into life in order to be known and recognizedby our own sleepingselves and by those around us. Moreover he is in the grief and anguishwe feel when our finer naturesgo unseen,leaving us excludedand unappreciated. Through his rage we come to know our need to battle back into life and becomewhat and who we are. Hephaestus,on the other hand, brings to rage its inventive. imagemaking possibilities.WhereasAres combustsin outer activity, Hephaestus burns internally, in the imagination. During rageful arousalwe experience influencein the agonizingand shamefulthoughtsand feelings, his archetypal fantasies furies that burn in our minds, drawing us inward and destroying and our sense well-being. We come to know the poundingof his anvil in our of soul in a variety of ways, through wavesof humiliation, from overpowering manipulationin the heated,obfantasiesof revengeor passive-aggressive

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sessedsearchfor the causesand meaningsof provocative and disturbing events.His effect can ultimately be the stillnessof emotional withdrawal. To some, the in-drawing of libido that occurs when we are captured but that is not the to by this proto-imageryof anger appears be depressive, who brought to humanity the tools of civiwhole siory. Like Hephaestus, lization, such inward-turning libido holds the promise of creative and inover instinctual which may lead to transcendence novative self-understanding, grief how in thesetwo brothers,in their passionate rage. Yet we seeagain are the very seedsof a deeperconnectionto life. and anguishedexile, But they alone cannot be the midwives of the creative potential inherent in their natures. The reason is that they themselvesare the products of that is thwarted."2aThis is Kerenyi's "halfness," of a "drive for oneness Hera, whose fullest expressionof symbolic meaning is in the analysisof marital couple, when she is estrangedfrom Zeus, leaving them both incomplete and the psychological totality of their marriage hopelessly fractured. the description applies equally well to her sons. All three carry within their archetypalconfiguiations a gnawing senseof deprivation, of being split-off from iome essentialpart of their natures. What issuesfrom this splitness and unrelatedness' of is rage, the overpoweiingexperience unacceptability, The lack of fulfillment of the queen by the king could not help isolaiion. but lead her and her sons to rage, that destructive emotion arising from and blocked individuation. incompleteness But what of redemption for this afflicted lineage? The myths again provide the answer,for the charming and harmonizingAphrodite, goddess bf beauty and love, embodiesthe archetypalbalanceand containerfor the tandem. She is the goddess hot, furious energiesof the Ares-Hephaestus who "makes pale every sort of partialness" and "dissolves oppositesinto unity."25 Theie capacitiesbelong to her nature, becauseshe herself is the child of wildly divergentforces. According to the most popular accountof her birth, Aphrodite emerged from the foamy conjunction of the genitals of her fathei Uranus, which were severedin hate by his son cronus, and the cool, maternal sea into which Cronus flung them.26Arising in this nor to manner,Aphrodite is no stranger violent aggression, is sheunfamiliar for with dark depression, it was malicious Uranus who, in a grotesqueact of inward-turninglibido, stuffed his many children back into their mother Gaea'swomb.27 The motif of binding and being bound play an important part in the dynamics of rage and anger, but to this point in a most negative way. who bound his mother, Hera, in the golden Rememberit wis Hephaestus throne and who netted the illicit lovers, Ares and Aphrodite, in their incriminating embrace. And wasn't it Hera's lack of the bond of marital fidelity thit was responsiblefor her tortured halfnessand insanejealousy? 1[le r"" this thime amplified further in the etymology of the word "anger." Its roots are in suchimagesas "drawing tight,","constriction," and;'strangulation," and in such powerful emotions as grief and anguish.

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Hereit becomes clearthat in the phenomenology the rage/anger of continuum there is an experienceof psychological narrowing, as-if inner and outer freedoms were being squeezedto death. In the midst of rage, conscious flexibility is lost, and the ego's senseof psychologicaldistince and perspectivecompresses, leaving little spacefor dispassionate self-reflection. This tightening happensphysically, too; it attacki the chest in the twistine pain of angina (Aristotle defined anger as a warm fluid or blood boilinl aroundthe heart)28 tormentsthe gut in the crampsof colitis. It is presenl or as well in the tautnessthat overtakes the skin of our hands and facei when we become enraged..In. way,, our physiology speakselegantly, wearing a this emotional constriction and hardnesslike armor that mieht have beei fashionedfor Ares by his clever brother. Aphrodite's binding is utterly different. Hers can be the gentle bond of the love embrace, which does not isolate people but obliteratestheir opposition. Her charm and beauty loosen the conitricting shacklesof dejection and quell the brother's conflictual energies.Aphiodite brings into life the pleasure and joy we experience when we are completely ac-cepted by ourselves by another,an experience or that singsaboutthe intrinsic vllue of our souls. she accomplishes this miracle becauseshe is the goddessof co.mmonlove (Aphrodite Pandemos),yours for the asking, even for such misfit gods as Ares and Hephaestus.Aphrodite as a funttion of psyche epitomizes desireto bind the instinctualto the world of humanexperience the eiving,personalizedform and direction to the brothers' wild #ergy.2e !1. It is shewho gives to the nascentimagery of rage's chaosits sensual q,rluiity and inner allure, thus enabling this imagery to become "meaningfuliy ani psychicallyreal"r0 to ego consciousness. By infusing the archetypalpossession rage with the promiseof hope of ^ for a p.ersonalconnection to its hidden healing imagery, Aphrodite mak'es it^possible- the ego to open to, touch, andbe moue-d the experience for by of the soul, and give form and body to thosemisunderstood andiejected _to aspects. rage. Ultimately this is a meansby which rage's little appreiiated of creativity can come to consciousness. thesereasonJ, For perhaps,,4phrodite belongedboth to Hephaestus, his lawful wife, and to Arei, as his pasas sionateequal on the battlefield of love. out of this triangular liaison emergeda child, born to Aphrodite but claiming two fathers. His name was Eros.3roriginally a creative daimon, or creator spirit, instrumentalin the birth of the world at the beginning of tim9,3l Eros, by the later, additional ascriptionof his paternity to the two gods, is someonespecialin the Greek pantheon.He is i link bltween such impersonalforces as the beginningsofthe world and the more human-like and personalworld of the gods and goddesses. Eros's dual natureis critical to the transformationof rage into anger. The processinvolves the birth of consciousorder out of the chaos of archetypaipossession, task for Eros a in the role of creator spirit, and the connectionbetweentire archetypalor impersonal aspects tl]j: psvcheand the more humanizedworld of personal, of consciousinteraction,Eros's forte as eod of relatedness.

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As a psychologicalfunction, Eros mediatesbetween and relates the different realms of inner being for the ego. He facilitates and presidesover the integration of our diverse personalities and over the process of the humanizationof archetypal energies. He is therefore the intrapsychic means In by which we enter into self-consciousness.33 effect, he is alive in what As moment of greateror lesserconsciousness. mediator I have called the very special sort of psychic readinessand space. His Eros constellatesa activationin the psychecan be felt when behavioralor instinctualexpression is internally interrupted and redirected towards symbolic experience and quite without our consciousintention. This redirection may be awareness suddenand disconcerting,taking place in the very midst of somebehavior, stoppingour acting out or acting in during rageful momentsso that we may takenote of or reflect upon a particularheatedthought,vivid image, fleeting feeling, or intricatefantasy.On the one hand, we might attributethis sudden birth of awarenessfrom hitherto instinctive expression to Eros as creator spirit. On the other hand, it might just as well stem from his kinship with who also worked the formless or chaotic into the formed, the Hephaestus, in refined. A similar duality is at work in Eros's success driving raw into the psychologicalwedge between action and reaction. His ability to intrude a himself actively into automatic happeningsand bring forth consciousness is evidenceboth of Eros's superiorcommandover natural forces, as would to befit a creator spirit, and his strong resemblance Ares, who impells us penetrateinto life consciouslyand fully. to But as Aphrodite's son, Eros makes "direction action' . ' indirect and imaginative" and "through this development of inner space, time and imagination. . . the psychic world comes into actuality":+ In so doing he furthersthe work of his mother, that of making inner imagesmeaningfully even more clearly to the and psychicallyreal by relating ego consciousness in intrinsic message the chaosof rage. He expandsrageful constrictionand in embodiesthe kind of consciousness which we more directly perceive' interactwith, and symbolically decipherthe imagery Aphrodite has imbued with sensualityand allure. ln Eros's world of psychic reality, the reflexive releaseof rage can be halted and anger can be distilled as a purposeful, consciousfeeling state. human becomemore personal,madeinto a conscious lnstinct and archetype event through our full erotic involvement, which includesseeingand hearOnly ing, feeling and knowing, suffering and acceptingrage's essence.35 then, after fully taking this essenceto heart, does meaning become clear and constrictiondisappear. Eros helps us to love the image in rage, which is at first so hard to by know or tolerate.Aphrodite beginsthis process encirclingtheseseemingly unlovablebrotherswith her acceptingembrace.She cools their furious heat into more palpable,discernableimagery. Then Eros setsour souls to work comprehendingwhat she has done. While Aphrodite gives the energy of AreJ and Hephaestusits psychological liveliness, imaginal urgency, and

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peculiarbeauty, Eros revealsits inspiredmeaningfulness, thus grantingthis hitherto rejectedcreativity an accessinto consciouslife. This ls how rase is redeemed into anger.

THE IMPLICATIONS Before consideringthe clinical implications of the ideaspresented, let me restatethe central thesis. Underlying the feeling statecalled angeris an archetypal paradigminvolving severalgodsand goddesses. Thesear-hetypal persons the basisofthe emotionalexperience are ofrage and, consequently, of anger. Central to anger's essence the theme of being the miifit, the is unloved one. Hera, the forsakenqueen of olympus, and her two irascible sons, Ares and Hephaestus,are principal players. Hera, becauseof her estrangement from a rejectingZeus, is the origin of this senseof misfitness, while Ares and Hephaestus representthe two major poles of this archetype continuum. Ares personifiesthe aggressiveimpulsion of rage to become manifest in life, and Hephaestusincarnatesits opposing, inward-turning movement. where Ares is the physical drive in our rage, its "dynamic; aspect,36 Hephaestus its psychologicalpossibility for crafting thii passion is into meaningful image, its formal component.3T transform, these two To characters require containment,for alone they remain instinctual and protosymbolic. Aphrodite, as the archetypalvessel, and Eros, as the a"ceiso. into consciousness, provide the enablingspacefor the humanization rage of into anger.The contentof rage's alienationtakeson symbolic form and cin be relatedto the consciousness the individual. of So far as I have observed, this transformation occurs in a three-part sequence remarkablysimilar to the three stages the alchemicalopus-the of nigredo, then the albedo, and finally the rubedo-the symbolic syitem that describes growth and developmentof our inner life. In the nigredo, the the phaseof overwhelmingdarkness,one first confrontsthe chaoscalled .ase. In therapeutic work, this is the time when the patient'spersonaand defeise mechanisms begin to crumble and the wild and shadowy presencethat is rage blackensconsciousness with Phobos,fear, and Deimoi, terror, Ares's other children. The patient is captured by the grief and anguish of lost reality-testing and maisive projectiron onto others6f the rageful"inn".chaos. During this time, whetherthe individual is working on rageTanger a central as issue in his therapy or is moving through a situationafrageiul experience that may occur in any life, rage may manifest in a vaiiety of somatic complaints. It may be aimless, unconsciousagitation, peruasivemuscular tension,cardiovascular irregularities,irritabrebbwels,hot flashes,pounding head, or pounding fists. other manifestations may be violent temper outbursts directed at innocent bystanders,passive-aggressive manipulations, obsessive self-blame,self-righteousness, even bbuts of forgetfulness or and somnolence.In all of these symptomswe may recognizethE influence of

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the outcast brothers: Ares who entraps us in the desire to strike out and Hephaestus who imprisons us in deep dejection and slowed aliveness. Often these hounding symptoms close all psychologicalexits. There seemsno way out for the patient; everything seemspolluted and everyone stinks, and not eventhe analystcan be trustedto fulfill long-deprived wishes or fill the agonizingemptiness.This is the chaosof the alchemical"prima " materia, which ragedepositsso inelegantlyon our psychological doorstep. Only when this utter lonelinessand outer chaos are faced, accepted,and integratedcan any relief take place and meaning emerge. It is not uncommon for this state of affairs to frighten and stimulate rageofthe analyst/therapist. Insteadoffacing this challenge, the unintegrated of the analystmay defendagainstthe explosiveness this instinctual,alienated stateby denying its potential meaningfulness the patient and by acting for out the role of the good mother, offering the panacea loving acceptance of far too quickly and indiscriminately.Integratingrage does not mean whitewashingit in this manner.It meanssitting with it, looking at it, and honoring its reality by listening to its furious, deprived cries. In most casesthis has never been done for the patient or the analyst, and their rage has become deprivedof its opportunityto reveal its creativerole twisted and detestable, in their individuation. This creativeside of the archetypalconfigurationhas been repressed, that Ares and Hephaestus so have been consignedto their hellish, unconscious, instinctualsolitude,unredeemed. The words "Be nice, don't fight, don't say thosenastythings" are the litany that maintainsrage's deprivation.What is really meantis, "I don't want to hear about or seethis rage because can't handle its numinosity and power." I At this point, the analyst must not sidesteprage but witness and encourage this archetypal outpouring and mirror it with the operations and techniques his or her disposal,in order to bring consciousness much at that closer to its concealedmeaning. This mirroring is not the mirroring of the motherbut the incarnationof the Aphroditic attitudein the analyst,enabling him or her to see through the frightening and unattractive symptomatology to its core of meaning. As such this attitudeis the incarnationof Aphrodite Pandemos,that aspectof the archetypalimage of Aphrodite as "common love," whose compassionfor and desireto connectwith the other extends to every elementof psychic life, including the hideousand the condemned. The presence her archetypalcharm and beauty in the therapeuticvessel of compensates and embracesthe ugly, inner splitnessthat is the essence for of rage, not in a motherly holding fashion, but with the empathicintent to unite with and createnew life from the furious energiesof the two brothers. In alchemicalterms,Aphrodite is Venus, the cooling salt, who balances the effects of the fiery sulfur of red Mars, the condensation of the two brothers, during the opus. As Jung pointed out, she elicits the symbolic meaning concealedin rage's instinctuality by "turning body into light" through the medium of Eros, "the principle that brings everything into relationship."38Aphrodite and Eros make whole what has been divided.

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When constellatedin the analytic vessel, Aphrodite leads the therapeutic work into the albedophase,where proto-imagerymay more and more take has shapeand where consciousness the opportunity to conjoin with rage's meaning. Aphrodite's influence manifestsfirst as a senseof trust in the analytic processand in the compassionof the analyst, so that crumbling defenses and personafragments may be let go, allowing the stinings of meaning The within rage's instinctuality to rise to the surface of consciousness. this trust back to the patientby empathizingwith the analystin turn reflects anguish of rage, by believing in the healing nature of this process, by the encouraging patientto make contactwith the emergentimagery, and by offering his own ego and insight as an integrating tool. This is Aphrodite which, "embodying the reflective as one aspectof anima consciousness makespossible"experiencing minoring activity of consciousness," [and] "3e real and emotionallyimmediate]images. Theseimages through[palpably and the interactionwith them permits the patient to achievea are healing, vital senseof psychologicalinteriority. She heraldsthe birth of a flexible, where before there was only the imprisoningand self-awareconsciousness, of frustratingconstrictionthat is the unconsciousness rage. by differentiatesand humanizes helping the paAlbedo consciousness tient to construct a consciousrelationship to his other symptoms and to that they do not happento us but within us. Without this insight understand the patientremains"emotionally stuck" in instinctualrage, forced to repeat createsa shift the symptomsin an automaticway.ouAlbedo consciousness away from unconsciousacting out or acting in of rageful impulsesto the recognitionof the value of its hidden imagery. As Hillman says,the albedo of is the "phase calledwhitening [and] refersto the emergence psychological and consciousness to [the perceptionofl fantasycreatingreality."ar This is By the creation of symbolic consciousness. embracingand integratingthe compellingly real imagery, whether through dream, fantasy, thought, or idea, the brothers' rage is "betrothed" to Aphrodite, and isolation gives first betweenpatientand analyst,andthen between way to erotic relatedness, patient and self. The numerousparadigmatictechniquesor tools in which this development is implementedtypically involve differentiation of inner material with the albedo phase and reflection, two activities intimately associated and critical to the humanizationof instinctualenergies.Someof thesetechniques, like ancient rituals, contain the "archetypal drives" in order "to more deeply into the substrataof the drive."a2 They carry consciousness include active imagination, guided imagery, Gestalt work, psychodrama, painting, sculpture,and even dance. All tap into the deeperlayers of rage to andpermit a looseningof the emotionalbondedness instinctualexpression, verbalization. conceptual for often the chaosof ragedoesnot permit adequate meaninghas a chanceto bypassverbal congestion Through thesetechniques consciousness. and enterthe patient's

ANGERAS INNERTRANSFORMATION

+-)

Another tool is the analytic dream (which may incorporatesomeof the above techniques).Working with dreams is the natural channel through which the symbolic meaning underlying rage is revealed. It expands the patient's imagination regarding the intricacies of rage and the archetypal persons and factors at work in it. Dreams differentiate where and how individuation is blocked, not so much by answeringquestionsabout rage as by posing them. The dream imagery conditionedto this archetypalconfiguration can be infinitely rich and dependsupon the individual context, yet some noteworthy markers are: fires and forges, rednessand blood, lameness and swiftness,miscreants and missedopportunities,tandemsand triangles,rabid dogs and hungry wolves, tight placesand tight spots, and, of course,enragedcharacters every ilk and description.Suffice it to say of that by opening up to the image as carrier of rage's potential and by personalizingit through reflective and attentive (or "loving," in Aphrodite's language)amplification, association,and inner dialogue, the misfit in rage begins to find its place within the family network of the psyche. A third tool that has proven helpful is called cognitive appraisal.a3 This is the objective, step-by-step evaluationof the patient's rageful experience and includesan appreciationof his contribution, the involvementof others and the situationalrealities.This reality-oriented investigationof the rageful projectionsand mechanisms work in the chaosof eventsforcesthe patient at to confront the concretereality and to account for reasonable and unreasonableexpectations.It is a painfully candid processwhich holds a stark mirror up to the patient's rage and enableshim or her, for better or worse, to see it directly and frankly. The final tools I will mention are humor and laughter in the albedo phase.They are perhapsthe most delicate of all, and in fact may not be tools at all, but the clearestindication ofhow successful other tools have the been. Only when the patient has truly detachedthrough therapeuticwork from the blinding, unconsciouspossessiveness rage and differentiated of from its emotional chaos may there be genuine laughter. Prematurelyor insensitivelyemployed by the analyst, humor will only increasethe sense of alienationthat rage creates.But at the right moment, the invocation of humor and laughterby analystor patientcan humanizerage. Humor expands consciousness grounding the ego. It is the recognitionof the other side by of the feeling of anger and of its potential for bringing the joy of release from unconsciousness the patient. Humor's earthy etymology bearswitto nessto this: humor, humus, humble, human. Through humor we touch our humanitymost concretely,scalingdown archetypalinflation so that we may appreciate modestyof our being. Aphrodite doesthis by being ' ' laughterthe loving" throughout the Odyssey; Hephaestus,with his waddling, funny shuffle which was at times all that could distractthe godsfrom "each other's throats;"aaandAres in his compromisedposition as the golden-netted lover of his brother's wife, which brought the gods great delight. More than anything else, therefore, therapeutichumor representsthe psychological freedom gained through the therapeuticwork.

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The third and final phase in anger's transformation from rage, the rubedo, or phase of redness,is scantily covered in the Jungian literature because,I think, it is the most individually actualized phase. It seems possible,however, that the rubedo signalsthe transitionin the opus and in to individuationfrom being solely inner-directed an ever greaterinvolvement in life.asIn the rubedo the patient's transforming personalityis no longer interference. of blocked,no longercut offfrom the world because archetypal through conscious The insights won and the instinctual energy harnessed integrationare applied to life in a most deliberateand consciousway. At this stage, the personality is no longer "shut. . out from the world, but gathersthe world to [him or her] self."a6The patient's senseof relatedness to self and other is no longer distorted becauserage has been transmuted into the conscious,differentiatedfeeling stateof anger. This anger acts as a lodestone,guiding the individual in a most personalway to where individuation is blocked and to those aspectsof life that require exploration and reconciliation. the Anger as humanizedrage harnesses energiesof Ares and Hephaesonce tus, redeemingand integratingthem into consciouslife. Their redness, causticand destructive,has now becomethe warming and catalytic redness as informs our consciousness we continueto do of the rubedo. Hephaestus inner work with anger, with its imagery, its fantasy, and its purpose.Ares is presentin the urgency anger brings to engagethe other and also to become involved in the wider human community. Aphrodite is presentin the cool, cleansingpleasureof anger worked through and resolved. Ultimately, however, the rubedo belongsto Eros, whose influence is creative spirit is at the very core of our the subtlestof all. His enthusiastic senseof personalliberation when, brought into closer touch with ourselves and the other through integrating the meaning of anger, we no longer feel to the outsideror misfit. Instead, what emergesis the inspired relatedness life all around, and a new dignity. What better way could there be to end anger'slong exile?

NOTES
Plutarch, "On the control of anger," translatedby W. C. Hembold, in Moralia, VI (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 90-159; Seneca, "De Ira," translatedby John W. Basore, in Moral Essays(Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1958) pp. 106-355. James R. Avelill, Anger and Aggression (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1982), p. 149. Solomon Schimmel, "Anger and Its Control in Graeco-Roman and Modern Psychology," in Psychiatry (42), Nov. 1979, pp.322ff. Carol Tavris, Aveirll, Anger: the Misunderstood Emotion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). Martin E. Seligman, Helplessness: On Depression, Development and Death (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1975) Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks (London: Thamesand Hudson, l96l), p. 150; Walter Otto, The Homeric Gods (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979). Homer, The lliad, translated by E. Rieu (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966). Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, Yol I (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 74.

2. 3.
A

5. o. 7. 8.

ANGER AS INNER TRANSFORMATION

45

p. 9. Kerenyi, 150;Homer,Book V, 890. 10. Otto, pp. 47-48. BookIV. 441. 11. Homer. p. 12. Kerenyi, 150. (Zuich: SpringPublications), l-21. pp. 13. ReneMalamud,"The AmazonProblem," in Spring 19'11 1970)'p.60' SpringPublications, Hymns(Dallas: The Boer(trans.), Homeric 14. Charles (Ztnch: SpringPubA 15. Munay Stein, "Hephaestus: Pattemof Introversion," in Spring 1973(a) p. lications), 36. p. 16. Kerenyi, 157. 1978),pp. 62-63. Press, University Chicago of of The 17. PaulFriedrich, Meaning Apollo-(Chicago: Book VII, 265. Books,1946), Penguin by translated E. Rieu(Baltimore: 18. Homer,TheOdyssey, p. 19. Stein, 38. University Princeton CW 13 (Princeton: 20. C. G. lung, "The Secretof the GoldenFlower," 195'7, p. 1970), 141n. Press, p. BookXVIII, 4l7ff.; Stein, 41. 21. Homer, 22. Boer,pp. 84-85. p. 23. Stein, 41. p' (Dallas: 1979), 4lSpringPublications, 24. Kerenyi,"Aphrodite," inThe Goddesses pp. 25. Kerenyi, 58-59. 26. Ibid. 1973),pp. Father," in Fathersand Mothers(Zurich:SpringPublications, 27. Stein,"The Devouring 64-'74. 28. Averill,p. 113n. UniversityPress,1972),p. 60. Northwestem Hillman, TheMyth of Analysis(Evanston: 29. James 30. Ibid,p. 101. p. 31. Kerenyi, 71. 32. Ibid.p. 17. 33. Hillman,p. 70. 34. Ib id.,p . 71 . 35. Ibid.,p. 74. ..OntheNature p. 1970), 244. Press, Princeton University cw 8 (Princeton: ofthe Psyche," 36. Jung, 37. Ibid. 1970)'p. 244. Press, Princeton University CW 38. Jung,MysteriumConiunctionis, 14 (Princeton: p. (New York: Harper Row, 1975), 43. & Psychology 39. Hillman,Re-visioning l98l), p. 25. Spring Publications, 40. Hillman,"silver andrhewhire Earth," in spring l98l (Dallas: 41. Ibid. pp. 42. EdwardC. Whitmount,"On Aggression,"in Spring 1970(Zuich: SpringPublications), 4950. pp. 43. Schimmel, 33lff. 44. Steinop . cit. # 15 , p. 36. , (Toronto: InnerCity Books'1980), von 45. Jung,op.cit. #38, p. 229;Maie-Louise Fnnz, Alchemy o. 227. 46. iung,op. cit.#36, p.226.