The Dance of Anger

A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships

By: Harriet Lerner Ph.D.

Narrated by: Harriet Lerner

Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence our anger, to deny it entirely, or to vent it in a way that leaves us feeling helpless and powerless.

In this vivid, engaging and eminently wise work, Dr. Lerner teaches women to identify the true sources of anger and to use anger as a powerful vehicle for creating meaningful and lasting change. The challenge of anger is at the heart of our struggle with intimacy, self-esteem, and joy. The Dance of Anger has inspired more "You changed my life" stories from both women and men than perhaps any other best seller on the American scene today.

©1985 Harriet Lerner, Ph.D. (P)1997, 2004 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Critic reviews

"An inspirational message for all women....Like a family heirloom, it can be passed from generation to generation, as it is based on profound and lasting truths." (Peggy Papp, M.S.W., The Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy)

Helps bring awareness and clarity

Author uses great examples to help better understand where anger stems from. She provides great advice on making changes within to resolve negative feelings and patterns. Highly recommend for anyone looking to better themselves or improve relationships.

awesome!

amazing and well explained. I enjoyed her insight and knowledge. she is obviously a good family counselor and well known in Bowen. great book!

Good Starting Point

Going through 31 years of my life not knowing how to identify my anger in situations, this book has been a great starting point. I still have more to learn and understand about anger, but this did a good job at summarizing and introducing the whole enchilada.

This book changed my life

This book was recommended to me. I have ADD so books are hard to read so I bought this in audio form. It's easy to listen to. But everything makes so much sense. It changed all my relationships for the better, even the ones that I didn't think needed to be fixed. I recommend it to anyone with relationship issues, whether it's your parent/child relationship, inlaw relationship, husband/wife relationship, sibling relationship, etc.

Great book!

Full of examples to help apply to your life.
I would highly recommend this book to everyone. Angry is a tricky thing and this book helps people use it in a healthy way. And since everyone has or should feel anger in their life, this is applicable to all.

good but missing the exercises

Where does The Dance of Anger rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It was among my favorites

Who was your favorite character and why?

I liked the author's realistic perspective

What three words best describe Harriet Lerner’s voice?

authentic, unrehearsed, familiar

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Many of the situations were familiar

Any additional comments?

I think it would be helpful to keep this in a rotation to listen to regularly. Very helpful advice.
At the end of the audio she mentions exercises you could do, but they're not included in the audio version.

Content was good

I don’t enjoy listening to this....so much so that I actuallly sped it up to get through it faster. The content was good but the creepy music was horrible!

Excellent Advice for better communication

I never realised that anger was such an important teacher and Harriet illustrates beautifully how to use that anger for better understanding of oneself and how to better communicate one's own needs. Will definitely be using these techniques to better communicate.

Essential reading

I remember seeing the cover of this book decades ago. If only I had read it then.

It took listening to a Brene Brown podcast with Harriet about opologizing for me to run straight to this book and read it. It is the reason why I finally moved forward with an Audible account

I was not disappointed. I have had family and personal therapy through the years and have learned tidbits of what Ms Lerner teaches. In this book she gives concrete real life role playing examples of how to dramatically improve your relationships especially with self. I can’t recommend it highly enough

Limited and somewhat trite

She reduces the situations she is describing to somewhat cookie cutter simplicity, rather than seeking potentially all the variables that go into the dance of anger. Her stereotyping women is unhelpful at best, shrill at worst. The relationships between men and women is reduced to a simplistic and unhelpful cliché and my experience in counselling over decades does not support her perspective, and limits her ability to understand the relational dynamics that are going on.. But it sells her books. There are some helpful statements throughout and her use of Freud in some of her analysis is also helpful.