All That Rage

At the second international conference on unruly behaviour by airline passengers – DISPAX World 2014, 10–11 June 2014, London – the aviation community called for urgent measures to combat alcohol abuse in connection with the ongoing increase in “air rage”. Crew members were advised to exercise honourable restraint in dealing with unruly passengers, and engage in good, calm, clear two-way communication to de-escalate the situation. Both with the enraged person, and with other crewmembers.

Looking at the change in the sense of space on long-haul flights over the past 20 years, we can see how little room is available. Being restricted or driven into a corner is, as we know, one of the main triggers for an attack or sudden outburst of rage. Seats used to be 48 centimetres wide, and today they are just 43 centimetres: less space, and with it an exasperating restriction of movement. This 5cm-per-seat saving has meant that a nine-seat row in economy could be expanded by one seat. With 20 rows, that’s 20 more people on the plane. In business class, meanwhile, the trend is for wider seats: up to 76.2cm. A clear working and middle-class system. For mere mortals in economy, the space between seats has been reduced from 86 to 75-71cm. In business class, the gap is nearly two metres. This squeeze on the usual space for passengers can be compared with the doubling in the number of cars on our roads, causing more congestion, scarcer parking places, a shortage of time and stress. It is worth bearing this context in mind if we are surprised by the increase in road and air-rage.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell produced her last great attack of sudden rage at Heathrow Terminal 5 on 3rd April 2008. According to media reports, it was triggered by one of her six suitcases, thought to be overweight, not being put on the plane to Los Angeles. Sitting in first class, she screamed, raged and harangued crew members until they cried with helplessness. She refused to be calmed down by the crew. The pilot called the police. After a final altercation with the police, Lady Rage was escorted off the British Airways flight in handcuffs. She is said to have hit and spat at a policeman as he was arresting her. Campbell was taken to Heathrow’s police station for questioning. According to British Airways, staff and police did everything they could to help Naomi Campbell. Unfortunately, her outburst of rage had made her lose control and the police had no choice but to arrest her.

Eyewitnesses said she had consumed several alcoholic drinks. In June 2008, Campbell was given 200 hours of community service and a £4500 fine for assaulting two police officers, use of threatening and offensive language and disorderly conduct towards the cabin crew. Campbell was repeatedly sent on anger-management courses, they didn’t enable her to change her pattern of rage. In her view, one possible reason for this destructive behaviour might be that she still felt a fierce rage towards her biological father, who left her mother when she was pregnant with her. She never had a father figure and had always suffered from a deep and often severe fear of abandonment. Of her relationship with her “surrogate father” Nelson Mandela, Campbell said he was an incredible inspiration who made her reflect on her own life. In him, she found a paternal friend who, even when she had done something wrong never condemned her.

In the world of modern normalising psychology and psychopathology, sudden and severe outbursts of rage are now regarded as an affective personality disorder relating to impulse control. Many people who suffer because of their own sudden rages experience an implosion after the explosion – a deep sadness that they have lost control once again. This is something Campbell says consistently in the interview she gave after her sentencing. This moment of sadness is often a propitious time, which will motivate someone to seek help through psychotherapy. Otherwise, emotional tension will start to build up inside them again, unavoidably culminating in a sudden attack of rage.

Mammals of all species and their ancestors, when attacked by a predator, have often managed to defend themselves or struggle free thanks to the physical power unleashed by rage. Rage is useful for the ultimate self-defence. This emotion is an inherited habit. We can approach the repertoire of our own and other people’s emotions with care, certainty and liveliness, devoting our energy to the task, if we trust our own inner voice. Moods, affects, physically manifested or even obviously illuminating emotions reveal our true self.

To know an emotion in and of itself, you have to experience it. It can never be completely, comprehensively understood, because our human psyche as a whole is not something that can be grasped with consciousness alone. And so showing your psyche in your own feelings and emotions can often be a thoroughly honest social and inter-personal risk. Even Sigmund Freud tried to master his emotions – although we know that in intense emotional debates with male colleagues who were important to him, he sometimes came close to passing out. This was his organism's way of protecting him from unleashing his emotional passions. This was in November 1912, when the 56-year-old Freud had a theoretical and personal argument with his designated successor, the 37-year-old C.G. Jung. Freud experienced this fainting fit (being overwhelmed by his own feelings) because he was unable to express his intense emotions of anger, sadness, disappointed love.

What we cannot yet say, we may experience. A feeling arises. A fundamental trust strengthens our guiding emotions and our physical and mental health. The particular emotional path we take through life depends on our culture, the age in which we live and our beliefs. Rage experienced in a healthy way evaporates along with the ferocity it brings out here and now in our bodies. Suppressed rage, on the other hand, becomes hard, bitter and often explodes violently in the form of a sudden outburst.

As soon as I dare to feel, imagine and think of the eternal as a process, I sense in the heart of my feelings the transpersonal miracle of existence that reaches beyond me. For me as a psychotherapist, it is important not to let my own feelings of annoyance, anger and rage become a taboo subject. I have feelings that patients cannot yet release in themselves.

As our young colleagues train to become psychotherapists, and experience therapy themselves, one thing I would like them to learn from us seniors is to give authentic expression to their own difficult feelings, from a slight irritation to nagging doubts and annoyances, all the way to the more intense waves of anger, rage and sudden rages. Then they will no longer be afraid to be a human being and ashamed of what and who we truly are, and who we will become.

Theodor Itten is a psychotherapist and a clinical psychologist in private practice. He is the executive editor of the International Journal of Psychotherapy and the author of Jack Lee Rosenberg.