If, as many geniuses have believed, civilization depends on individual restraint, then in order to maintain restraint, we require certain outlets for the primordial feelings of anger, aggression, and resentment that we experience throughout the course of life. Premodern societies, with their frequent wars, provided more opportunities for discharging these impulses. By contrast, in our feeble, post-Christian country, anyone who is what used to be called a plain dealer—honest, frank, and direct—may be thought to have “anger management issues,” to engender “a hostile work environment,” to have “oppositional defiant disorder,” or God-knows-what. Therefore, although our therapeutic culture values nothing so much as the individual’s feelings, there is still a lot of repression as regards negative emotions.
