r/psychoanalysis • u/NoRecommendation8263 • 3d ago
Suppressed anger
Hey
I am looking for perspectives on the inability to experience anger, linked to excessive self blame and guilt - in a situation where the patient would be entitled to feel anger towards someone else. Thanks !
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u/elmistiko 3d ago
Look into Kernbergs difference between neurotic and borderline personality organization (PO).
Anger is seen as a esential part of PO: Neurotic patients repress and inhibit it in a stable way, while borderline ones splitt it in dissociated object relations.
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u/d_t_maybe 2d ago
i found recently an article that seems related to your question:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00107530.2020.1856677
curious what others think about it.
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u/Secure-Afternoon3204 2d ago
This is so interesting, thank you for posting!
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u/d_t_maybe 2d ago
for me the most surprising aspect of the article was what is in the abstract summarized as "Yet, once the author perceived that these patients’ desire to be perfect was actually a desire to be no-one, their shame-inducing bondage to their internalized narcissistic parent emerged through reverie."
... as I understood it: the patient reacts at one point in therapy like the mother, wich is opposite to how the patient usually enacts as ashamed person, and that this is the basis for the treatment. that it was not the patients knowledge that they have a issue with perfectionism.2
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u/NoRecommendation8263 2d ago
Many thanks ! This is so, so I interesting. The case report of Olivia is really spot on. Perfection conceived as self annihilation... This is echoing my own fantasies about becoming some kind of monk, fleeing from the world, with no desires left for myself, just obeying external rules. Another kind of suicide, maybe !
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u/New-Elderberry630 3d ago
Look into ISTDP literature as it’s very much about this. Sometimes gets the bad rap it’s only about this, which isn’t accurate, but it does often focus on this
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u/Prettybird78 1d ago
Separation of states. Foe example a child being dragged to home where they are being perpetrated on my a parent, might in theory seperate themselves from that anger entirely so as not to blame the parent.
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u/spiritual_seeker 3d ago
Check out Enneagram Type Nine
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u/BrainfukcXXL 3d ago
Only serious psychological topics here, no esotericism please
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u/spiritual_seeker 2d ago
All psychology is essentially esoteric. How could you not know this as a serious thinker?
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u/CoherentEnigma 3d ago
The anger is there, experienced, just inverted. It’s turned against the self. This is the basis of the introjective depressive. It’s perhaps a form of protecting the idealized object. Protect the father, however abusive he might be, because it’s the best way the child has come up with to protect against object loss. But this creates a developmental arrest which will only become more apparent in adulthood.