It's All the Rage

摘要

Anger management is all over the place. News stories mentioning this therapy enter the Nexis database at a rate of 10,000 per year, versus a paltry 40 for periodontal surgery. Type in "anger management treatment" in Google, and you get over 300,000 entries, divided mainly into (a) research articles and (b) self-promotion by practitioners claiming they can cure your road rage, desk rage, even golf rage. Sony Pictures somehow got a hit out of a mediocre Adam Sandier/Jack Nicholson comedy on the subject. Assisting in the growth of the therapy: There are absolutely no barriers to entry. Anybody, even Mike Tyson, can lawfully proclaim himself an anger-management counselor, and if the tyro doesn't exactly know what to do when the "patient" comes through the door, he or she can buy (for $28) Anger Management: The Complete Treatment Guidebook for Practitioners, by two lofty Ph.D.s, Howard Kassinove and Raymond (Chip) Tafrate. The book includes a solid chapter counseling practitioners who develop anger problems of their own―not exactly surprising when one spends the whole day with people who fly off the handle.