On Collective Rage by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. Author of Women Who Run with the Wolves.
“Collective anger or rage is also a natural function. There is such a phenomenon as group hurt, group grief. Women who become socially, politically, or culturally conscious often find that they have to deal with a collective rage that seeps upward through them again and again.
It is physically sound for women to feel this anger. It is physically sound for them to use this anger about injustice to invest ways to elicit useful change. It is not psychologically sound for them to neutralize their anger so they will not feel, so they will therefore not press for evolution and change. As with personal rage, collective anger is also a teacher. Women can consult with it, question it in solitude and with others, and act upon their conclusions. There is a difference between carrying around old ingrown rage and stirring it with a new stick to see what constructive uses can come of it.
Collective rage is well utilized as motivation to seek out or offer support, to conceive of ways of impel groups or individuals into dialogue, or to demand accountability, progress, improvements, consciousness. These are appropriate to their caring about what is essential and important to them. It is part of the healthy instinctual psyche to have deep reactions to disrespect, threat, injury. Devout reaction is a natural and expected part of learning about the collective worlds of soul and psyche.”