The Anger the Fear of the Ugly Neurotic


Two neurotics walk into a bar and wait. One grows anxious, convinced the waiter despises him. The other erupts, accusing the waiter of blatant discrimination. By the time the waiter arrives—five minutes later—both have fled. This is the fundamental comedy, and tragedy, of neurosis: one implodes with guilt, the other explodes with blame. Both are imprisoned by projection, the psychic defense that evicts internal turmoil and casts it onto the world. But it is the explosive type, the one who makes his anxiety everyone else’s problem, who we might call the Ugly Neurotic.

Not long ago, I found myself in a real-life version of this scene at a rental car office. I approached the counter calmly to ask a benign question about another agency, but before I could finish, the man behind the desk erupted. His face flushed crimson, his voice cracked with fury, and his hand slammed the counter as if I had insulted his very existence. His eyes were tired and empty, his shoulders slumped under an invisible weight, yet his anger broke over me like a storm. I recognized him instantly: the Ugly Neurotic, trapped in a violent projection. He was not responding to me, but to the objet a, the elusive, aggravating embodiment of his own lack that he had superimposed upon my calm inquiry. He had drafted me into a script I hadn’t read, casting me as the villain whose role was to confirm his persecution.

I smiled and said, “That is why I will not rent a car from you.” His reply was a whip-crack: “I don't care! I don't know you, and I don't want to know you!” He even threatened to call the police, while I looked at him amazed. As the shouting escalated, I felt my own anxiety stirring, not fear or anger, but something harder to name. Against my better judgment, I suggested he see a doctor. That comment unleashed a torrent of venomous, inventive insults unlike anything I had heard before. Finally, the person I had actually come to see from the other agency arrived, and I could settle my business in peace while the man kept raging in the background.

The scene haunted me not because of his rage, but because of the specific, verbatim poison of his words: “I don't know you, and I don't want to know you.” They functioned as a quilting point (point de capiton), a seemingly ordinary phrase that, for me, suddenly stitched together the present incident and a much older, deeper rejection. It was a distorted echo of a message I had once decoded from the silences and averted gazes of an authority figure: “I don’t want to see you.” To not be seen is to be symbolically erased. His outburst had, quite by accident, lanced the abscess of that old wound.

This is the power of psychoanalysis: it allows us to see beyond the evident. With the right lens, we understand that what appears to be an outburst from a clerk is also a revelation of unconscious fear and desire. But what surprised me most was how much I had changed over the years. Twenty-five years ago, I might have yelled angrily back, maybe even gotten into a fight. Fifteen years ago, I might have collapsed into guilt, assuming it was my fault. Now, as an older and more seasoned man, I was more amazed than anything else.

The rental clerk’s drama was contained, a tempest in a teapot. But transpose this same neurotic structure into a corporate leader, and the stakes are exponentially higher. I have seen it firsthand: the manager whose critiques are laced with personal contempt, the executive who mistakes intimidation for strategy. Their anger is a quieter, more insidious violence, but it is violence nonetheless. An angry leader does not merely have a bad temper; they reveal an untreated neurosis that weaponizes hierarchy. They outsource their internal chaos onto their teams, forcing subordinates to manage the leader’s anxiety instead of their own work.

This is why Lacan insisted psychoanalysis should not remain the property of specialists. Its greatest value may be in the world, especially for those who hold power. A leader’s reaction is never just a reaction; it is a foundational act of meaning-making for everyone who witnesses it. A culture of rage etches wounds into institutional memory; a culture of recognition builds trust that outlasts any single project.

The difference, ultimately, is not between yelling and silence. It is the difference between a scene driven by unconscious fear and one led by conscious vision. The Ugly Neurotic, whether behind a counter or in a corner office, is always a prisoner of the former. The rest of us have a choice.

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