Harriet Lerner's book, The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships provides a helpful and insightful look at anger in women's lives. She teaches women that anger can be a constructive emotion that can help strengthen personal relationships. Her advice can be especially helpful for women, like me, who have sometimes dealt with anger in ineffective and potentially damaging ways. Overall, Lerner's book is full of helpful advice for women seeking to understand and manage their anger.
Lerner's book is was initially attractive because of the title's emphasis on anger. I have known many women in my life who seem to feel that anger is an unattractive and unhealthy emotion that should be suppressed and avoided. As a result, these women seemed to suffer from a great deal of repressed hostility in their personal and work relationships. They would rarely become outwardly angry at people, and yet they would comfortably undermine the confidence of others, and act out in a passive-aggressive manner. I often wondered if there was a better approach to managing anger than the one that these women and so many others seemed to take. The point was driven home when I started to notice myself acting in the same sort of passive-aggressive manner. Lerner's book promised to provide a chance...
Lerner notes that women are commonly seen as nurturers and peacekeepers, and that venting anger often brings about disapproval. In defiance of the common belief that anger is disruptive, Lerner argues that anger is a powerful signal for change that can be a valuable tool in helping women to empower themselves.
Lerner argues that denying and silencing anger has the end result of making women feel helpless and powerless. She suggests that in denying anger women deny an important signal for change and empowerment in their lives. Instead of denying anger, Lerner argues that women should attempt to define the true source of their anger. It is in this identification that women can hope to learn to use anger as a tool for lasting change in their personal relationships.
In general, Lerner's comments about women's perceptions of anger ring true. As noted earlier, I know a great number of women who deny and suppress…
