ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the distinction between two kinds of anger-"healing anger" and the "destructive anger"-alongside the concept of "destructive idealization", as well as the notion of the "impulse to separate". Perhaps the most dangerous form of "destructive anger" is one that is not experienced at all as anger or any feeling, but is acted out instead. The repressed, unrecognized, destructive anger can turn also against the self and appear in many different disguises. The denied anger towards the therapist has to be brought into the open and transformed into "healing anger". The notion of "healing anger" seems to be more useful because of its immediate link with therapy itself as well as with good, everyday relationships. The "mutative", healing anger expresses the impulse to separate, not the wish to merge, to punish, to retaliate, or to destroy. If such specific distances are reduced, there is an immediate impulse to separate.
