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Yet the great majority of my clients over the years have been psychologically “normal.” Their minds work logically; they understand cause and effect; they don’t hallucinate. Their perceptions of most life circumstances are reasonably accurate. They get good reports at work; they do well in school o…

When people conclude that anger causes abuse, they are confusing cause and effect. Ray was not abusive because he was angry; he was angry because he was abusive. Abusers carry attitudes that produce fury. A nonabusive man would not expect his wife to be taking emotional care of him during a crisis …

I sometimes ask my clients the following question: “How many of you have ever felt angry enough at your mother to get the urge to call her a bitch?” Typically, half or more of the group members raise their hands. Then I ask, “How many of you have ever acted on that urge?” All the hands fly down, an…

When a client of mine tells me that he became abusive because he lost control of himself, I ask him why he didn’t do something even worse. For example, I might say, “You called her a fucking whore, you grabbed the phone out of her hand and whipped it across the room, and then you gave her a shove a…

Many years ago, I was interviewing a woman named Sheila by telephone. She was describing the rages that my client Michael would periodically have: “He just goes absolutely berserk, and you never know when he’s going to go off like that. He’ll just start grabbing whatever is around and throwing it. …