OUR INNER WORLD OF RAGE: Understanding and Transforming the Power of Anger

Since publishing Fight Against Fears in 1951, Freeman has written or coauthored numerous volumes (most recently, The Beloved Prison, 1989) dealing with her ongoing psychoanalysis and the psychology of guilt, tears, depression, dreams, fantasies, murders, etc. Here, she investigates the causes and effects of suppressed rage. Freeman traces the rage reaction to a primitive mammalian survival instinct and to a festering residue of anger over childhood resentments against parental strictures and/or abuse. She connects the high teen-suicide rate to an eruption of suppressed murderous rage turned on the self. Women, she argues, should face their fury over past and current ""inequities in society"" to ""lose the guilt that shadows rage."" Although men are permitted to display anger and hostility, many fall short of the ""heman"" ideal--which may be the cause of their high rate of suicide after age 45. Freeman also relates suppressed rage to guilt, depression, and fantasies; discusses its impact on sex, marriage and physical health; and traces its relationship to murder. She concludes that facing inner rage, preferably through psychotherapy, can help us ""become aware of the differences between childhood wishes to destroy and realistic wishes to achieve--between hostile aggression at an early age and assertiveness as an adult,"" thus absolving ""the guilt of the past."" Well researched, but maundering and derivative of Freeman's previous works.