Grandmother Nina sometimes has fits of class hatred. And then I let her in to the windows — to grumble. She returns enlightened, rested, as if from a resort.
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Some psychologists are convinced that the child’s containment of his dissatisfaction with his parents makes them neurotic. Another part of psychologists believes that not restraining children from their negative emotions makes children psychopaths.
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If the therapist is convinced that the release of aggression frees the person from it, the clients believe it too.
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A splash of emotions is a useful thing, but sometimes it is too exciting and turns into an emotional winding up.
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In the psychological literature, there is often a recommendation: “If you are angry and you are overwhelmed with aggression, do not suppress it in yourself, find a way to defuse it. Throw it out in words, throw it out in actions, and you will feel better. If you suppress your emotions, it will reflect badly on your health.”
Many people, both amateurs and professionals involved in mental health issues, believe that there are many opportunities to replace the real attack with the goal and thus «drain» (extinguish) the pent-up internal impulse to aggression. Orthodox psychoanalytic theory, using the hydraulic model of motivation, argues that people can defuse their accumulated impulses to violence in various ways: surgeons by working with a knife during operations, salespeople by persistent attempts to convince a recalcitrant customer to make a purchase, climbers routes not traveled by anyone and so on.
In 1939, Yale University psychologists John Dollard and Neil Miller wrote that «the manifestation of any act of aggression» weakens the propensity for violent action that arose from the disruption of previously planned plans. However, they pointed out that «this weakening is temporary, and the impulse to aggression may arise again if the initial feeling of frustration is strong enough» (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer & Sears, 1939, p. 50).
Most of all, the recommendation to discharge one’s aggressive impulses is popular among Gestalt therapists and psychotherapists of the psychoanalytic wing, however, psychotherapists often talk about the benefits of not real, but imagined aggression.
The famous psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel wrote in 1945 that children can release their hidden urges to commit violence by punishing dolls during play, creating the illusion that in this way they are punishing parents or brothers and sisters who have unjustly offended them. Note that Fenichel considered this method to be ineffective.
Even physicians who have little interest in psychoanalysis are convinced that their patients must «discharge» or «release» their pent-up emotional energy by exercising imaginary aggression. Here is one example of such a situation:
The woman participating in the experiment is asked to pick up a tennis racket and begin to beat it on the bed. At the same time, she is asked to say phrases such as “I hate you!”, “Shit!”, “Son of a bitch!”, “I will kill you!”. Group members watching this woman begin to encourage her aggressive actions, asking her to continue in the same spirit and hit with a racket even harder (from Alexander Lowen, cited in: Berkowitz, 1973 b).
The propaganda of such views by psychotherapists led to the spread of such views among the masses.
For example, one firm began to make and sell toy guns for adult motorists so that they could simulate shooting at other drivers who interfere with their traffic, and thus relieve their annoyance caused by traffic accidents. One of the young participants in this game, according to a newspaper report, described the virtues of such a pastime: «You leave here all your disappointments … This shooting and these alleged murders do not make you a criminal.»
Among the typical recommendations in connection with the inquiries «What to do with outbursts of irritation in a child» began to sound the advice of psychologists to give the child a special «whipping bag» to help him «bring out the accumulated irritation.» What this leads to, see →
Admirers of this recommendation often use the metaphor of a pot of steam that will explode if it is not released. This metaphor is beautiful, but wrong. Anger is more like a forest fire that will take over large areas with catastrophic destruction if the first small fire or fire is not controlled in time. See →
As for the discharge of aggression not through speech, but with the help of real or imaginary physical actions, such as beating up an imaginary offender, the experiments confidently say that the method of discharging aggression through screaming and outburst of emotions often helps women and poorly helps men. This does not free men from aggression, moreover, it brings them more trouble. The fact is that in female aggression, in the emotional outbursts of women of a speech plan (such as “How angry I am with you, I’m ready to kill you, I’ll slam you now!”) contains only internal tension, only energy without content, but the intention to slap someone here not implied.
But the words of men are different. These are not just sounds, they mean exactly what they say, the cry of a man is meaningful and specific, a distinct desire to carry out certain threats is embedded in it. And if, splashing out his anger, a man over and over again lives through his not just weighty, but specifically organizing text for actions, then he does not discharge himself, but winds up and charges, and the matter may end not in relief, but in a fight.
When a group of psychologists interviewed employees who were angered by a dismissal notice they had just received, these people became even more hostile towards the company after they had the opportunity to express their critical attitude towards its management. The consequence of their emotional statements was that they began to inflame themselves more and more (Ebbesen, Duncan & Konecni, 1975).
Particularly controversial seems to be the recommendation to parents not to prevent children from freely expressing their discontent and aggression. There is no evidence that nurturing restraint and respect for parents in children turns them into neurotics, but it is highly likely that children who are not used to restraining their dissatisfaction with their elders will grow up to be psychopaths.