Tina adjusted her skirt so that it covered her knees as Dr. Bradbar introduced her patient, a forty-three-year-old woman who had been receiving electroshock therapy for rage attacks. Two men in front of me looked at each other and, without needing to say a word, shared a low laugh. I cleared my throat audaciously, and one of them shot me a withering look over his shoulder. I panicked and cleared it again, mouthing sorry as I pointed to my throat to signal there was really something stuck in there and that I was not in fact a lib bitch.
Then the floor was Tina’s, and for a moment, I wanted to run straight out of the room. It was nightmarishly quiet, and there was a scarlet rash mottling Tina’s neck and chest, poison red against the blue of her dress. Suddenly, she rose from her chair and dragged it closer to her patient. They had been placed rather far apart, I realized. When she sat down again, the chair cushion emitted a juvenile puff of air that drew muffled laughter.
“I hear you’re struggling to control your anger,” Tina began in a loud voice that shook, and gestured for her patient to enumerate.
The anger experienced by Tina’s client was directed at her husband and children. She was studying for her real estate license, and none of them could be bothered to pitch in just a little bit around the house. She would rant and rave when she came home from class to find dirty dishes left in the den and laundry molding in the washing machine. Things came to a head the night she shattered one of those dirty dishes and threatened her teenage son with a shard of porcelain. Her husband called the police, and the police referred them to a local psychiatrist who diagnosed her with rage attacks. Electroshock therapy hadn’t been helping.
Maybe I was imagining it, but Tina’s rash seemed to recede as the patient described her condition. My shoulders dropped, and the urge to flee from what seemed like Tina’s imminent humiliation vanished.
“Tell me,” Tina said in a commanding voice that still trembled on certain words, “do you ever feel anger toward people who are not your husband or children?”
“Oh, I’m angry all the time,” the woman said, which elicited plenty of laughs.
Tina looked out at the crowd and indulged them with a rueful smile. “Give me an example,” she said.
The patient mulled it over. “At the grocery store, for instance, when someone takes too long at the deli counter. Show some common courtesy. You can see all these people are waiting. You couldn’t have made up your mind about what you wanted before your number was called?”
“And do you ever yell and scream at those people?”
“Of course not. Never.”
“How come?”
The answer was so obvious the patient laughed. “Because they would think I was crazy.”
“And you don’t want them to think you’re crazy.”
“I do not.”
Tina stared off into the middle distance, organizing her thoughts. Someone coughed impatiently. I blushed on Tina’s behalf.
Tina focused her sights on the patient. “If you had to weigh your feelings of anger toward those people in the grocery store against those you have toward your children and husband, would you say that the anger you feel in the deli line is more or less intense than it is at home?”
“More,” the woman said without hesitation.
“And why is that?”
“Because the people at the grocery store are strangers to me. I don’t know any of their good qualities. I feel nothing toward them but anger.”
“And yet,” Tina pointed out, “you are able to control your anger with them, even though you experience it more intensely at the grocery store than you do at home.”
At this I dared a look around. Surely others must be as impressed as I was. I could see where this was going, and Tina’s logic was undeniably sound. But either people were listening with snide half smiles or they were dozing off.
The patient pursed her lower lip in concentration. “Yes. Clearly, I can keep ahold of myself if I want to.”
“So it’s actually inaccurate to say that you can’t control your anger.”
“I suppose it is, and I’ll give you that, I never stopped to think of it that way. But I don’t want to just control my anger. I want to get rid of it.”
“What if I told you that would not be my recommendation?”
“I don’t follow.”
Tina’s gaze swept the room as she delivered the diagnosis—not for the patient but for her audience. “I’d like to propose that anger in women is treated as a character disorder, as a problem to be solved, when oftentimes it is entirely appropriate, given the circumstances that trigger it.”