I found this fascinating… it’s rare these days that I see some fundamental assumption in my thinking that I didn’t even realize I was making laid bare like this… it is particularly striking because I think I could easily have realized that my own experience contradicts catharsis theory… I know that I can distract myself to become less angry, but I usually don’t want to, in the moment.
I think that desire is driven by emotion, but rationalized via something like catharsis theory. I want to try and rescue catharsis theory by saying that maybe there are negative long-term effects of being distracted from feelings of anger (e.g. a build up of resentment). I wonder how much this is also a rationalization.
I also wonder how accurately the authors have characterized catharsis theory, and how much to identify it with the “hydraulic model of anger”… I would imagine that there are lots of attempts along the lines of what I suggested to try and rescue catharsis theory by refining or moving away from the hydraulic model. A highly general version might claim: “over a long time horizon, not ‘venting’ anger is net negative”.
I found this fascinating… it’s rare these days that I see some fundamental assumption in my thinking that I didn’t even realize I was making laid bare like this… it is particularly striking because I think I could easily have realized that my own experience contradicts catharsis theory… I know that I can distract myself to become less angry, but I usually don’t want to, in the moment.
I think that desire is driven by emotion, but rationalized via something like catharsis theory. I want to try and rescue catharsis theory by saying that maybe there are negative long-term effects of being distracted from feelings of anger (e.g. a build up of resentment). I wonder how much this is also a rationalization.
I also wonder how accurately the authors have characterized catharsis theory, and how much to identify it with the “hydraulic model of anger”… I would imagine that there are lots of attempts along the lines of what I suggested to try and rescue catharsis theory by refining or moving away from the hydraulic model. A highly general version might claim: “over a long time horizon, not ‘venting’ anger is net negative”.