Systems conceptualization and treatment of anger

Clinicians, researchers, and patients tend to view anger as attributable to immediate circumstances and current thoughts. In contrast, systems-oriented thinking approaches anger as a contextual and dynamic phenomenon. Personal dispositional systems of anger (cognitive, physiological, and behavioral) are embedded in an interdependent network of interpersonal and environmental systems. Anger coevolves with and is in equilibrium with these systems. The more adaptive and embedded it is within a system, the greater will be its inertia or resistance to change. The automaticity of anger further challenges its regulation, as does its transfer across domains. Other troublesome systems phenomena associated with anger and aggression are escalation and threshold effects. Anger arousal, as a deviation from homeostasis, is inhibited and counteracted by various negative feedback loops that are properties of internal, interpersonal, and environmental systems. Treatment augments anger-regulatory mechanisms. Interventions aimed at anger reduction should consider the systems in which anger is embedded and the adaptive functions anger serves within those systems. These and other systems concepts are explicated and are illustrated with material from two clinical cases.