Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity

Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Paperback. Very good. Paperback. 9" X 6". xxix, 402pp. Very mild shelf wear to covers, corners, and edges of pictorial paper wraps. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is sound.

ABOUT THIS BOOK:
We are in the midst of a runaway rage epidemic. Hateful mass murders at schools, shopping malls and places of business are rapidly escalating in America and around the globe in recent decades. Why? Though the causes of violence in our culture are complex, the troublesome human emotions of anger and rage play a central role in the genesis of evil, violent behavior and psychopathology in general. In this newly revised electronic edition of his provocative and critically acclaimed 1996 book, clinical and forensic psychologist Stephen A. Diamond determines where rage and anger originate and explores whether these powerful passions are, as most people presume, purely pathological, negative and destructive or can be meaningfully redeemed and consciously redirected into constructive activity. Employing concrete examples of the vicious and terrifying explosions of violence tearing society apart, clinical and biographical case studies, as well as striking visual images, Dr. Diamond traces anger, rage and violence through their most terrible and destructive expressions to their creative and transcendent functions in art, psychotherapy and spirituality, illuminating and revealing the paradoxical power of rage. He provides a penetrating existential and depth psychological analysis of the perplexing and pervasive problem of anger today, explains how even trained mental health professionals tend to misunderstand and mismanage it, and offers an alternative approach to dealing more constructively with rage in psychotherapy and society.(Publisher).