Anger: How to Live With and Without It

The book applies the ABC model Ellis developed in his earlier work: Activating events trigger Belief systems, which produce emotional and behavioral Consequences. The key insight is that anger is not directly caused by what happens to a person, but by their beliefs about what happens—specifically, the demand that reality, other people, or oneself must conform to wishes. Ellis identifies the core irrational belief as: 'That which I dislike should not exist, and those who treat me unfairly must be condemned.' The formula for neurosis, as one reader summarized the book's logic, is simple: whatever I dislike should not exist, and whatever I want should exist . Reality does not obey these demands, producing rage, anxiety, or despair.

Ellis distinguishes between anger and frustration, disappointment, or annoyance. The latter are healthy, proportionate emotional responses to genuinely unpleasant events. Unhealthy anger, by contrast, involves damning or condemning others or oneself, and is characterized by absolutistic demands rather than preferences. A reader's summary of the book's logic explains that people with adequate thinking respond to bad situations with regret, annoyance, or dissatisfaction, while those operating through irrational filters experience rage and a desire for revenge . The book teaches that even 'righteous' anger—anger justified by genuine injustice—is a losing strategy, because it damages the angry person and typically escalates conflict rather than resolving it .

This 1977 volume is Ellis's first full-length treatment of anger, written alone and published by Reader's Digest Press. Ellis later collaborated with Raymond Chip Tafrate on How to Control Your Anger Before It Controls You (1997), a revised and expanded version that incorporated additional research and clinical experience. In the preface to a later edition of the original book, Ellis explained that although the two books contain some overlapping material, they supplement each other, and the publisher decided to keep both in print . The 1977 book established the REBT framework for anger; the 1997 volume with Tafrate added empirical grounding and updated clinical applications.

A recurring criticism is the book's repetition and uneven pacing. One reader noted that the authors spend too much time circling the topic before delivering actionable content, describing it as 'too much water' before the practical techniques . Another observed that the book can read like an advertisement for REBT itself . The content is also demanding: a reader's review emphasized that cognitive therapy suits only people of at least average intelligence and requires significant work . Ellis himself acknowledged that his institute produced little basic research, meaning the book's methods rest more on clinical experience and philosophical reasoning than on controlled trials validating REBT specifically for anger.

Ellis rejects the catharsis hypothesis—the popular notion that expressing anger reduces it. Instead, the book argues that rehearsing and venting rage strengthens the underlying irrational beliefs that produce it. Yelling, pounding pillows, or retaliating rehearses the demand that the offending person must be punished and reinforces the cognitive habit of damning. A reader's summary of the book's logic notes that while it feels pleasurable to unleash furious emotions, this is an unhealthy strategy that damages relationships and leaves the angry person more entrenched in absolutistic thinking . The alternative the book advocates is disputing the irrational beliefs directly, then communicating assertively without hostility.

Ellis repeatedly cites Epictetus, the first-century Stoic philosopher, whose dictum that 'people are disturbed not by things, but by their views of things' is the philosophical foundation of REBT. An Amazon reviewer highlighted the book's invocation of Epictetus on the opening pages and noted that Ellis returns to this principle throughout . This Stoic inheritance distinguishes REBT from purely behavioral or biological approaches to anger: the remedy is cognitive and philosophical, involving examination of the judgments one makes about events. Ellis, who was trained in philosophy before psychology, treats therapy as a form of teaching clients to think more philosophically about adversity.