Cioran rightly recommended that anyone experiencing a fit of rage toward someone simply take a piece of paper and a pen and write down a few dozen insults: “He’s a pig, a scoundrel, a criminal, an animal….” The rage passes. If it does not pass, it diminishes dramatically, and putting it down in writing brings about a kind of release. Now, what happens with anger also happens with anguish. But the processes are different. Anger dissipates with the frantic, dizzying outpouring; it dissipates through the way one writes. Anguish, on the other hand, dissipates, at least in part, through rationalization. It is always the same: evoking it seems to intensify it, plunging the mind into a painful process; yet, little by little, as one describes how it operates, it loses its strength, as if understanding were neutralizing it. In the end, one is left with a text: there it is, laid bare, perhaps very unpleasantly; but it has indeed diminished.