Anger and inter-personal communication

George A. Schräder

pp. 331-350

in: David Carr, Edward Casey (eds), Explorations in phenomenology, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1973

Abstract

There are two major problems posed by the phenomenon of anger: what is it? and what are we to do about it? Philosophers have been primarily concerned about the second question and, thus, have treated anger and kindred emotions more from a normative than a descriptive standpoint. Psychologists and psychiatrists, on the other hand, have been primarily concerned with manifestations of anger and the conditions under which it arises and is discharged. More often than not the descriptive accounts of anger have been coupled with recommendations for the optimum manner of disposing of it; similarly, philosophical proposals for responding to anger have assumed a phenomenological account of it. It is apparent that the descriptive task is more demanding than has been recognized by either the psychologists or the philosophers. Because of the complexities involved and the clear priority of the descriptive question, I shall be more concerned with the constitutive features of anger than with moral responses to it.