Before getting sidetracked, I had asked about people's experiences with anger, and I received a number of personal reflections and insights, for which I'm very grateful. People suggested at least three dimensions along which anger could be considered:

1. Expression: Is the anger expressed directly or indirectly?
2. Object: Is the anger directed at others or internalized?
3. Cause: Is the anger the result of someone else's wrong or your own?

I don't know if that list is exhaustive, but I think it's a good start. It has certainly helped me to think about my own anger. Until recently, my anger was generally unexpressed. Instead, it was held without any object. Over time, it fermented, and its cumulative causes became irrelevant. On occasion, I would be caught by surprise, and I would lose my temper, giving vent to vast stores of distilled anger totally unconnected to any immediate cause. But most of the time, I appeared easygoing and even-tempered. Anger--like sadness, fear, and even excitement--was a dangerous emotion that I avoided.

Therapy has been a crowbar in the seams of my psyche, severely disrupting my emotional management schemes. I have had to become more and more comfortable with the expression of anger as most of the hiding places where I kept it have been laid open. This has been an ironic, even perverse, process. At first, I was able to express my anger, regardless of its causes, only to those with whom I was comfortable--so my wife was rewarded for her tremendous emotional support with decades worth of anger that had nothing to do with her. And my anger is often expressed as a particularly unpleasant version of corrosive rationality. For a time, I felt the force of my anger myself (and I'd be curious to hear more from others about how that happens for them). I wouldn't want to do that again. It really was an independent, untethered force without apparent cause, indiscriminate in its objects.

Things are better now. I'm much more aware of my anger (as I am of all of my emotions). When I'm angry, I know why, and I'm often able to express it in an appropriate form and direct it at an object related to its causes. Some people suggested that they're generally able to avoid anger altogether, while others suggested that anger is a universal experience that serves a purpose. I'm not in a position to say which of those views is more plausible, but I still have a ways to go before the question is relevant to me.