Anger Provocation as a Crisis Intervention Technique

The author describes the use of anger provocation, a technique that encourages patients to express their repressed anger to a therapist who makes himself the target for their anger. He presents five case examples to illustrate the positive effects of the technique in crisis and emergency situations. Three of the patients were depressed and withdrawn, one was suffering from conversion hysteria, and one was a paranoid schizophrenic. The author cautions that the technique must be used with discretion only in those cases where the repression of anger is producing major incapacitating symptomatology, but where the anger is not the major source of disorganization.