Medicated anger – how boys with AD(H)D struggle for self-control

Abstract

Modern societies promote a form of self-control that is reduced to self-care integrating spontaneity. Acquiring it requires children and adolescents to cope with contradictions: in a consumer culture geared toward distraction, they are expected to concentrate; in a culture that worships success, disappointments are expected not to affect them. Boys in particular have difficulties with this. They find it hard to acquire the emotional competence to regulate the aggressive arousal they experience as a result of disappointment in a way that is both purposeful and socially acceptable. If they lack this competence, they experience blind rage to which they feel exposed as if to a force of nature.