IS ANGER A THING-TO-BE-MANAGED?

This article examines the theoretical and clinical implications of rejecting the idea that anger is a thing-to-be-managed. The concept of anger is constructed from metaphors grounded in people's bodily experience and folk psychology. These constructions promote a version of anger as a thing-to-be-managed, lending support to the anger-management paradigm. This article offers a critique of these ways of construing anger, presenting, instead, a model of anger as an in-relation-to phenomenon that fits with a nondualistic version of human experience. The clinical principles of unpacking, framing anger as a resource, and coordinating are presented as alternatives to the management paradigm.