Our Inner World of Rage: Understanding and Transforming the Power of Anger

In an insightful, jargon-free primer, Freeman ( The Beloved Prison ) distinguishes ``realistic rage''--a justified response to a perceived threat--from unrealistic, pent-up anger rooted in childhood fears and desires for revenge. With perceptiveness, calm and clarity, she dissects the rage that builds up in marriage when each partner expects the other to be ``the perfect parent they never had.'' Her use of psychoanalytic concepts sheds light on the hostility of rebellious adolescents, the vicious cycle of child abuse, the suicide's fury turned inward, the self-punishment of overeating and undereating. Not everyone, however, will agree with Freeman's orthodox Freudian viewpoint that homosexuality is a disorder marked by mother fixation, nor does her contention that most murders are caused by explosive childhood anger fully account for the random homicidal violence that pervades modern cities. Still, her popularly written manual is valuable, especially for pinpointing different stimuli that may trigger rage in women and men. (June)