Understanding Clinical Anger and Violence

Abstract

Although anger is a primary emotion and holds clear functional necessities, the presence of anger and its behavioral manifestations of aggression/violence can have serious emotional, health, and social consequences. Despite such consequences, the construct of clinical anger has to date suffered from few theoretical and treatment advancements and has received insufficient research attention. Thus, the purpose of this article is to introduce the Anger Avoidance Model, which is a new conceptualization of clinical anger and its behavioral manifestations. The Anger Avoidance Model suggests that among anger patients, a chronic early aversive history leads to information processing biases and emotion regulation deficits, which in turn result in intense efforts to avoid the experience of anger. This avoidance takes the form of hostile rumination (cognitive avoidance) and aggressive and violent behavior (behavioral avoidance). This model holds clear implications for research and treatment of this challenging clinical phenomenon.