Passing down the anger, passing down the shame

I recently finished reading a great book titled "Payback." The subtitle of "Why We Retaliate, Redirect Attention and Take Revenge" tells in detail what this book is about.

As I note, in a selection from my Amazon review:

Briefly, the authors note that many animals either retaliate against aggression or else redirect it lower down the food chain while we (and chimpanzees) are the only ones so far known to also use revenge. From there, they look at how this affects/relieves stress, in both humans and other animals. ...

Both in humans and animals, besides stress issues, the authors note aggression, and the various ways of dealing with it, relate closely to social status issues. they suggest this is part of why simple apologies often don't satisfy victims. Rather, whether consciously or not, victims are looking for a restoration of lost status, and perhaps a diminution of the aggressor's status. That doesn't happen after a few words.

If you are a survivor of sexual or physical child abuse, doesn't this all ring so true? And, while being abused does not an abuser make, for those abusers who were themselves abused, doesn't this ring true about abusers, too? That they "passed on the shit"?

And, for we the survivors, no matter whom our perpetrators, some of us may have been more affected than others because we had little to no outlet to pass things on further. Or, as the authors of the book note, already in childhood, we showed that we had personalities who didn't naturally do that, or often even think of that as a possibility true to our own natures.

Anyway, you may find this book well worth reading.