The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #96623   Message #1892010
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
23-Nov-06 - 04:25 PM
Thread Name: BS: anger - addictive?
Subject: RE: BS: anger - addictive?
I always feel uncomfortable with the term "addictive personality". I have a feeling that all of us are quite capable of becoming addicted to something. Some of us have been lucky never to come up against that something in circumstances where it takes over.

Obviously anger can be pleasurable, or at least analogous-to-pleasurable. (It can be painful too, but that's just the other side to it, like drink giving you a hangover.)

But I'd distinguish between being cross and being angry. I'm not at all sure that being cross is ever pleasurable, unless it's allowed to boil over into anger.
.........................
There was an old belief once that lions had a claw at the end of their tail. When faced with a difficult situation they were thought to start off mild enough, and then lash themselves into a fury by waving their tale and scourging themselves with the claw until they were enraged. That's not actually true of lions - but a lot of people are like that.