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Binding Chaos
Self

Anger

Updated August 5, 2026

Anger can be defensive, dominant or predatory. Defensive anger is against external threat and can be experienced by anyone. Dominant anger is used to sublate another. Predatory anger is used to obtain secondary anima through the stress response of another.

Expanded explanation

Ordinary usage treats anger as one emotion, a flare of hostility. Marsh sorts it into three by what it is for. Defensive anger answers a real external threat and anyone can feel it. Dominant anger is used to sublate another, to bend their will beneath one's own. Predatory anger goes further: it is used to draw secondary anima out of another person through their stress response, feeding on the energy their fear and distress release. The same word covers an ordinary defence and two ways of feeding on other people, and telling them apart is the purpose of the entry.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh distinguishes the two exploitative forms of anger by their function.

“Dominant anger is used to sublate another. Predatory anger is used to obtain secondary anima through the stress response of another”

Abstracting Divinity

Examples

Defensive anger
Someone cornered by a real threat feels the ordinary, shared kind, the flare that helps them push back.
Dominant anger
A person who rages to force another to submit is using anger to sublate, to pull the other's will beneath theirs.
Predatory anger
Provoking fear and distress and drawing energy from another's stress response is the predatory form, feeding on secondary anima.

How others use it

Psychology usually treats anger as a single basic emotion with a range of intensities and functions, studied through triggers, physiology and regulation. Marsh's move is to divide it by purpose rather than intensity, and in particular to name a predatory form tied to her energy model, in which one person feeds on another's stress. That functional, energy-based split is specific to her account.

Sources

Defined in the Binding Chaos series glossary, and developed through the emotions and anima material of the books.

Recommended reading path

Then read in full: Abstracting Divinity.

A suggested order for exploring this corner of the theory.