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ALTHOUGH J. D. NASON DOESN'T suggest it explicity, one thing is clear from his recent paper: The psychotherapy of rage, This Journal, 21: 167–192, 1985. There is more than one way to work clinically with rage, anger, or aggression, and each analyst's procedure is governed by his own conceptual scheme. Epstein, Fairbairn, Freud, Guntrip, Kernberg, Kohut, Mahler, Modell, Winnicott, among others Nason cites, offer a large variety of conceptual and procedural approaches from which to choose. Nason's approach is also appealing because it's sensibly reasoned, well written, and presented with professional style. But wide-ranging though all these approaches may be, they are not the only alternatives to consider. There are still other approaches to the psychotherapy of rage, as Nason and others are, no doubt, aware.
In this brief comment, I shall (1) sketch out still another variant of the above points of view, namely that the meaning of rage, anger, or aggression is, at its psychic root, a matter of failing individuation, and therefore unlived uniqueness; (2) offer some suggestions about the actual working-through of the multitude of fields of clinical inquiry in which the practically infinite possible inflections of rage, anger, or aggression appear, since they are, as in (1), derivative; and (3) indicate why the patient's own living through these experiences, as in (1) and (2), makes the therapeutic difference in each case, no matter the interpretive myth or metaphor,