Terry was a 40-year-old commercial artist, who came to counseling because his wife was concerned about his “anger problem.” He was quick to point out that he never got angry with her—that wasn’t the problem. He simply got angry at everything else. If he was working on a layout and the lead in his pencil broke, it was hard to tell what would happen next. If it was a good day, it might take several “breaks” before he lost control. If it was a bad day, the first time the lead broke he would erupt into a rage, sometimes even tearing up the design he’d been working on.
If he was working on a project around the house, the minute the slightest thing went wrong, he would lose it, sometimes causing enough damage that a workman would have to be called in to fix not only the original problem, but also the additional damage Terry had caused in his anger.
The final straw came when he and his wife were driving somewhere and an older driver did something that sent Terry off into a rage. He chased the other car and at a traffic light he actually got out of the car, and was prepared to pick a fight with a man old enough to be his father.
Even though Terry said he never got angry with his wife, it’s easy to imagine how his anger directly affected his marriage relationship. His wife was often either embarrassed or frightened, or both, but now she was also fed up with his “anger problem.”
In the past, Terry had tried several anger management workshops, but they only seemed to help for a time. The skills he learned would work for a while and then the old patterns would take over again. This time, he wanted to get at the root of the problem and resolve whatever it was he needed to resolve.
For some time now, whenever I encounter someone who has an anger problem, I ask the person about his or her father. Invariably I find the issues are related. In Terry’s case, he described his father as a very angry man. As he was growing up, Terry’s dad typically worked two jobs, so he was not home much. When he was there, Terry remembers his dad and mom fighting a lot and his dad, all too often, becoming physically violent with his mom. When Terry was 16, his father died of a massive heart attack.
Terry reported that he could remember many times the fear he felt when his parents were fighting with each other. He vowed as a child that he would never express anger toward any family member. He had kept that vow, but his anger was out of control in relation to inanimate objects.
Research on Fathers’ Roles Several years ago, a group of researchers set out to examine a five-year period of recent research in the field of child development.1 They found that, in every project, the researchers looked only at the mother-child relationship—the father was completely ignored. At first, they assumed the fathers were unavailable, but when they asked they found the researchers were not interested in the fathers. They felt the fathers were, at worst, unnecessary beyond conception and, at best, simply an extension of Mother. In other words, they defined parenting as mothering.
A more recent article purports the same thing the earlier researchers were saying—that fathers are not important in the study of child development.2 While this more recent article, along with the five years of child development research may be politically correct, it seems researchers are ignoring a large body of research that says the opposite. Studies on the effects of father absence in the lives of adolescents show a significantly higher rate of delinquent behavior and a much higher incidence of violence. Between 85% and 90% of adult male prisoners were raised in fatherless homes or in homes with violent, abusive fathers. The percentage for adult female prisoners is almost as high.
How does the father’s role during childhood relate to anger problems in adulthood? To better understand this, let’s look at a simple overview of early development. When an infant is born, there are two primary tasks he or she must accomplish during the early years of life. One begins at birth—the need to connect with a trustworthy person in order to make this strange new world safer. Typically, this person is the mother, and we call this task attachment. During this time, the infant is learning what it means to trust someone else, and love is the primary emotion experienced.
Of course, it is important that the infant also attach to the father during these first months, for he will play a strong role in the second task the infant must face—that of separating from the mother to some degree in order to begin the process of individuation. Usually, this begins around the sixth to the eighth month and marks the young child’s first moves away from the mother in order to explore the world and discover the beginning stages of autonomy. Here the father will play a very important role as the alternate person the young child can go to when he or she begins to take some tentative steps away from Mother. The primary emotion that energizes this movement is the energy of anger.
During the individuating process and beyond, the young child is learning what to do with this energy that comes from anger. If the father is there in a safe, nurturing way, the child can learn how to channel and contain his or her anger. For example, imagine that little Johnny, aged 2, is having a “bad Mommy day.” It’s so bad that he can’t even call Grandma for help. Around 6 pm he hears Daddy returning from work and heads to the door to greet him.
Daddy picks him up and asks him about his day. Johnny says, “Bad day—Mommy’s mean!” Out of the corner of his eye he sees Mom sprawled on the couch, her hair still uncombed, and knows it’s been a bad day. So he asks Johnny to tell him all the bad things that have happened today as he holds him in his arms and moves towards Mom on the couch. Finally little Johnny runs out of things to say, and Dad sympathizes with him. Then after a moment or two of silence, little Johnny says, “I want Mommy.”
What did Daddy just do? He helped little Johnny contain his anger. In other words, he made it safe for Johnny to experience and express his anger. If Daddy wasn’t there, or if Daddy were a frightening figure, little Johnny would have to either deny his anger or find some way to express it other than at his mother. The young child’s natural feelings of omnipotence would make it appear very dangerous for him to express those feelings directly at Mommy.
Breaking the Pattern How does all this relate to Terry? His father was not able to help him learn how to contain and channel his anger as a child. His dad didn’t know how to handle his own anger and, therefore, couldn’t teach his son what he didn’t know himself. As a result of his father’s failure in this area, Terry was on his own when it came to understanding his own anger.
For Terry to break the pattern of anger in his own life, he needed to look realistically at his father. The death of his father when Terry was 16 had made his father sort of a “mythic” figure—far removed from the reality he described. He had to break through his idealization of his father and see clearly where his father had failed him.
What was interesting in his treatment was that Terry, as an adult, had to finally face his fears about his father and allow himself to direct his anger toward him. This obviously couldn’t be done in a literal way since his father had died many years before. But even if his father were alive, this would not be a process that would involve his father. This is something Terry needed to do within himself.
Some of the difficulties Terry faced included his fear of turning his anger toward a person. He had felt somewhat safe in his expression of anger because he had never allowed himself to direct it toward anyone he knew. He was also afraid that if he turned his anger toward his father, he would be dishonoring him. Terry had to see that he still honored the good in his father, but God didn’t intend for him to honor the bad parts of his father.
As Terry went through this process, he soon found that his anger turned into sadness over what he had lost in his limited relationship with his father. Now he finally grieved the death of the man who had died some 20 years earlier. The last step of the process was for Terry to forgive his father. Again, this was something he did within himself. Forgiveness is personal and unilateral—it doesn’t involve the other person. It’s different from reconciliation, which is bilateral and does involve the other person.
Why forgiveness? Because that’s what God does with his disappointments in our past. Terry found that as he worked through this process in relation to his father and then forgave his father, the patterns of anger began to change.
David Stoop, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist, is the founder and director of The Center for Family Therapy in Newport Beach, California, where he has his counseling practice. He also serves on the Executive Board of AACC. Dr. Stoop is the executive editor of The Life Recovery Bible and the author of 20 books, including Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves and most recently, When Couples Pray Together. Endnotes
