Susan Anderson works with five stages of nondeath mourning. But she clearly indicates that these five stages do not always neatly proceed in a linear manner one right after the other. Instead of being linear in a straightforward way, they are recurrent stages.
In any event, one of the later stages represents a far more powerful experience of anger than had been experienced in the earlier stages. To be sure, she emphasizes that anger is present in the earlier stages as well. But in the later stage that she discusses, the experience of anger is so strong that she refers to it as rage -- to distinguish it from the earlier experiences of anger.
Now, hang on to what she refers to as rage. According to her, it is a later and powerful stage of healthy nondeath mourning.
Next, let's revisit Bill Press's book THE OBAMA HATE MACHINE: THE LIES, DISTORTION, AND PERSONAL ATTACKS ON THE PRESIDENT -- AND WHO IS BEHIND THEM (2012). From the right and from the left, Obama has been blasted in book after book.
If we were to interpret all the intemperate invective against Obama as what Susan Anderson refers to as rage, then we would conclude that many white people are indeed mourning their nondeath loss of WASP dominance of the 1950s. If this interpretation of their rage is correct, I wish them well in working through their rage.
John Bradshaw has done a lot of grief work, and he says that grief is the healing feeling -- provided, that is, that one's grief work stays healthy and leads one to resolve one's mourning over the nondeath loss.
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