who only harbor feelings of hatred as much as I condemn those who act on them. The law, and for
the most part the moral law, differentiates between feeling and conduct. Such actions as the torture and murder of the scapegoat population are defining qualities that take us beyond bigotry to hatred.
Some form of prejudice is present in most of us. When evidence of our prejudice surfaces, many of us will, in conscience, feel ashamed. But by the willingness to define our negative attitudes and feelings as âprejudice,â we have made a self-critical judgment that mitigates the force and reality of the feeling. A smaller number of us may go beyond prejudice and become actual bigots. With the bigot, the prejudice will not be defined as a failing in himself. The bigot assumes his felt superiority to the alien population is real, not a product of his own pathological viewpoint.
The bigot may have contempt, even disgust, for the outsider, but he will not commit crimes of hatred. A bigot may feel malevolence whenever he thinks of the despised group, but he is not obsessively preoccupied with them. When he becomes so, he crosses the border into hatred. Hatred requires both passion and a preoccupation with the disdained group. It requires an attachment to the hated person or population. And among the population of haters there will be a range of intensity. Many Jew haters among the Nazis who approved of the death camps could not necessarily have performed the acts of destruction. Because of this complexity, hatred can best be understood by exploring its three major components individually:
1. Hatred is clearly and most obviously an emotion, an intense emotion, that is, a passion. To better understand hatred, it is helpful to have some sophisticated understanding of human emotionsâthe irrational underpinnings of human behavior and the darker side of the human spirit.
2. Hatred is more than an emotion. It is also a psychological condition; a disorder of perception; a form of quasi-delusional thinking. Therefore, to understand the condition of hatred, one must understand the nature of a delusion, a symptom of severe mental disease. One must examine the meaning of the paranoid shift that is central to the thinking of a hating individual and a culture of hatred. This examination will lead us into the somewhat bizarre world of symptom formation.
3. Finally, hatred requires an attachment. Like love, it needs an object. The choice of an objectâalso like loveâmay be rational or irrational. Obsessive hatred is by definition irrational. The choice of the victim is more often dictated by the unconscious needs and the personal history of the hater than by the nature, or even the actions, of the hated.
With some understanding of these parts that add up to hatred, we can conceive how much more malignant is the sum of the parts. Since it is the feeling of hatred that directs the terrorist or the bigot to his acts of horror and enables him to justify them in his mind, it seems logical to start our understanding of that which seems beyond understandingâhatredâby examining its emotional underpinnings.
HATRED
AS AN EMOTION
3
RAGE
The Emotional Core of Hatred
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
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F or years I have struggled with the task of defining the multitude of human emotions that inform and illuminate the human condition. 13 Not an easy task. Feelings are not measurable. They have no atomic number or weight. And regardless of how advanced modern biological psychology may become, we are unlikely to find a way to objectively define, calibrate, or titrate an emotion.
It is unlikely that we will ever be able to distinguish such refined emotions as âfeeling touchedâ and âfeeling hurtâ by analyzing their chemical components. We may never locate the brain centers and neural pathways that differentiate shame from guilt, and even if we do, will that determination advance our understanding
of
the most part the moral law, differentiates between feeling and conduct. Such actions as the torture and murder of the scapegoat population are defining qualities that take us beyond bigotry to hatred.
Some form of prejudice is present in most of us. When evidence of our prejudice surfaces, many of us will, in conscience, feel ashamed. But by the willingness to define our negative attitudes and feelings as âprejudice,â we have made a self-critical judgment that mitigates the force and reality of the feeling. A smaller number of us may go beyond prejudice and become actual bigots. With the bigot, the prejudice will not be defined as a failing in himself. The bigot assumes his felt superiority to the alien population is real, not a product of his own pathological viewpoint.
The bigot may have contempt, even disgust, for the outsider, but he will not commit crimes of hatred. A bigot may feel malevolence whenever he thinks of the despised group, but he is not obsessively preoccupied with them. When he becomes so, he crosses the border into hatred. Hatred requires both passion and a preoccupation with the disdained group. It requires an attachment to the hated person or population. And among the population of haters there will be a range of intensity. Many Jew haters among the Nazis who approved of the death camps could not necessarily have performed the acts of destruction. Because of this complexity, hatred can best be understood by exploring its three major components individually:
1. Hatred is clearly and most obviously an emotion, an intense emotion, that is, a passion. To better understand hatred, it is helpful to have some sophisticated understanding of human emotionsâthe irrational underpinnings of human behavior and the darker side of the human spirit.
2. Hatred is more than an emotion. It is also a psychological condition; a disorder of perception; a form of quasi-delusional thinking. Therefore, to understand the condition of hatred, one must understand the nature of a delusion, a symptom of severe mental disease. One must examine the meaning of the paranoid shift that is central to the thinking of a hating individual and a culture of hatred. This examination will lead us into the somewhat bizarre world of symptom formation.
3. Finally, hatred requires an attachment. Like love, it needs an object. The choice of an objectâalso like loveâmay be rational or irrational. Obsessive hatred is by definition irrational. The choice of the victim is more often dictated by the unconscious needs and the personal history of the hater than by the nature, or even the actions, of the hated.
With some understanding of these parts that add up to hatred, we can conceive how much more malignant is the sum of the parts. Since it is the feeling of hatred that directs the terrorist or the bigot to his acts of horror and enables him to justify them in his mind, it seems logical to start our understanding of that which seems beyond understandingâhatredâby examining its emotional underpinnings.
HATRED
AS AN EMOTION
3
RAGE
The Emotional Core of Hatred
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
Â
F or years I have struggled with the task of defining the multitude of human emotions that inform and illuminate the human condition. 13 Not an easy task. Feelings are not measurable. They have no atomic number or weight. And regardless of how advanced modern biological psychology may become, we are unlikely to find a way to objectively define, calibrate, or titrate an emotion.
It is unlikely that we will ever be able to distinguish such refined emotions as âfeeling touchedâ and âfeeling hurtâ by analyzing their chemical components. We may never locate the brain centers and neural pathways that differentiate shame from guilt, and even if we do, will that determination advance our understanding
of
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