in sharper contrast than in ours. Over there, it’s so much easier to tell the
difference between right and wrong.
Anger involves an almost hopeless intertwining of morality and psy-
chology, yet our only hope for communicating effectively with angry people
lies in being able to separate the two. The reason there is no diagnostic
category for anger control problems is that mental health people can’t
decide whether angry people are sick or just bad. Sick people are entitled
to sympathy and treatment. Bad people deserve punishment. Grudgingly,
we insert not guilty by reason of insanitybetween the two, but that’s for
people who are reallycrazy. Where do we put people who are convinced
they’re fine but whose actions drive everybody else crazy?
Enter the personality disorder, which today is diagnosed along a
separate axis from more genteel problems like anxiety and depression.
According to the DSM-IV, a personality disorder is “an enduring pattern
of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expec-
tations of the individual’s culture.” The pattern is manifested in two (or
more) of the following areas:
- Ways of perceiving and interpreting self, other people, and
events - Range, intensity, lability, and appropriateness of emotional
response - Interpersonal functioning
- Impulse control
Isn’t this a remarkably civilized way of saying bad? The trait that sup-
posedly distinguishes people with personality disorders from those who
are normal is disturbed object relations, which means treating people not
as people, but as objects to supply one’s own needs. I’ve never met anyone
who doesn’t do this to some degree, but most of us are not exploitative
enough to meet the criteria for full-fledged personality disorder.
A good way to think about these disorders is as the unbridled pursuit
of a single psychological goal—excitement, attention, affection, adulation,
and control are the usual suspects—that feels as necessary as air and water.
Personality disorders are like addiction, another mental disorder with
moral overtones. Actually, they may be variations on a single theme. People
with personality disorders are often addicted to various substances, and
Explosions into Anger ❧ 207