You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In his latest book, which promises fresh insight into 'the least understood of human emotions'—anger—Dr. Rubin presents the thesis that there are three blocks which interfere with the free expression of angry feelings. He calls these 'the secret pact' (a fantasied belief that if a person does not get angry, the object will not get angry); the 'mind your own business syndrome' (a state of noninvolvement to avoid being hurt); and finally the need for control and mastery. Blocked anger becomes subject then to 'perversions' which convert healthy anger into a 'slush fund of perverted emotions'. The 'slush fund' presses for expression, and by means of a process he calls 'twisting', it is expressed in distorted 'grotesque shapes' or 'poisons'. 'Twisting emotional slush to poison is an unconscious process.' Rubin's 'perversions' of anger include 'putting it down', 'putting it off', 'putting it on', 'diluting it', and 'freezing it'. No doubt is left that blocking and then perverting anger is pathological. It is therefore distressing to find that the author's description of 'putting it down' could include such universal mechanisms as successful repression, reaction formation, neutralization—none of which are even mentioned in the book. To Rubin 'putting it down' (repression) means that the 'slush fund grows and the pus and its poisons spread'. Similarly, 'putting it on' is the author's term for displacement but there is no mention of this as a normal, universal mechanism of defense. Instead we read that it is 'splashing the slush fund onto others'. 'Putting it off' is synonymous with suppression,