ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the relationship between injustice, anger, and trauma. I examine psychoanalytic ideas about anger and the consequences of repressing anger, both emotional and physical, and I present clients who shrug off angry feelings in the face of racism. We consider the workplace as a frequent site of both injustice and the need to mask anger, using news stories about an NFL player who describes the effects of a hostile work environment and a black police officer who embarked on a shooting rampage against white policemen. I relate the role of religious belief in containing anger for some of my patients. We revisit the 1965 Watts “riots” and the Grier and Cobbs classic, Black Rage, in which two African American psychiatrists at a San Francisco community mental health clinic look at the psyches of black men in the aftermath of that summer of urban African American upheavals. “Tracy: The Relationship Between Trauma, Injustice, and Rage” presents a lengthy and detailed case presentation in which trauma, injustice, racism, bad luck, and family dynamics revolve
