Hatred by Willard Gaylin (best autobiographies to read TXT) 📕

most severe example of schadenfreude. One morning she arrived ecstatic and bubbling over with the news that she had just won a choice and featured part in a new play. It was the kind of part that garnered attention and could be a first step in a major career. And indeed it was.

I was a sophisticated therapist and knew enough about the tenacious quality of even mild depression—its resistance to actual achievement—to recognize that even though we had made significant progress in therapy, one event like this would not break the hold of the depression. Still, I was not prepared for the rage and despondency that emerged in her very next session. Morosely, she at first resisted all inquiries as to what had happened to dissipate the feeling of well-being that had been present only the day before. Finally, and reluctantly, she admitted with some chagrin that her change of mood was in response to a notice she had read in Variety that a close friend had been cast in a choice part in a movie.

When I questioned the vehemence of her response, her chilling answer was: “Don’t you understand? In order for me to be happy, it is not enough that I succeed. My friends have to fail.” Most of us can recall occasionally feeling some ambivalence—but not anguish—on hearing of a colleague’s success or honor, even though that success was not at our own expense or in any way diminished our own opportunities. I have heard many similar responses from patients, an inordinately large number of them from actors. I assume that the intensity of competition in the field and the scarcity of adequate roles create something approaching a zero-sum game. In almost any other field, diligence, persistence, and talent will eventually bring success and recognition. That is simply not so in the world of the theater. Obviously, schadenfreude is not limited to any one group. I remember hearing from a prominent professional man—a generous man who had demonstrated minimal rancor during the course of his therapy—that in elections for honors or to honorary societies, he found himself routinely voting against those people he knew best.

Schadenfreude is a particularly revealing means of demonstrating the negative aspects of a free, but competitive, society. Obviously, we live in a competitive world; there are areas in which another’s failure is in every way the equivalent of our success. Competitive sports is certainly such an area, and that may be one of its primary purposes, that is, to find a safe release for such competition. If my colleague bogies a hole, that is just as good as if I birdie the same one. In a running race, I win regardless of my speed or lack thereof if my opponent stumbles and falls. Similarly when I am running for office, my opponent’s severe gaffe in a debate may be in every way the equivalent of my being particularly eloquent.

The spirit of competition will not explain the tendency to convert noncompetitive areas into competitions. It would not explain the competitive angst a lawyer might feel on hearing of the success of his scientist friend. Nor does it explain the envy experienced by a divorced woman over the happiness of her married friends. These are noncompetitive situations, but in the crabbed world of the envious, all prizes are perceived as stolen from them.

The readiness to interpret a chance event as an assault on self is emblematic of the tendency of the envious to see false causal relationship—the attribution of purpose or design where none exists. The psychological device of “projection,” a key maneuver that links envy to paranoia, facilitates this tendency. Projection will be discussed in much more detail in subsequent chapters. Put simply, projection is the process by which we handle unworthy and unacceptable impulses arising from our own unconscious by attributing them to others.

A person who emerges from childhood with severe feelings of deprivation may carry with him into adulthood a desire to take from others that which he feels has been taken from him. Getting his own back. If this desire is actually perceived as legitimate, and if a perverse or absent conscience mechanism allows it, he may indulge this resentment in wanton acts of hatred. If, however, the feelings strike him as ignoble, he may project the feelings arising from within to others. The very feelings that he struggles with will then be perceived as arising from others and directed at him. This is the classic example of paranoid jealousy. It is almost a certainty that the jealous husband or wife is, at a minimum, obsessively preoccupied with illicit desires.

Jealousy is most often directed at what may be taken from us. Jealousy is anticipatory. It is fear of what is about to happen. Envy is driven by the past. There is a certainty that unfair deprivation has already occurred. With the envious person, anger and bitterness prevail because the injustice is perceived as already having happened. The emptiness and hunger are always present. “Consumed by envy” is an apt metaphor, and what is being consumed is pride and self-respect.

Chronic envy is an erosive, self-destroying disease. Like cancer, it eats away at the vitals of those who must live with it daily. When envy is a way of life, it converts the envious person into a grievance collector who masochistically embraces situations that confirm his deprivation and exploitation. If necessary, he himself will create such situations. He will interpret every ambiguous situation as a decision against him. Every route taken is the most heavily trafficked; his line at the checkout counters the slowest; his table at the restaurant the least desirable.

When the rage of frustration is joined by the irrational assumption that we are in a state of deprivation because “somebody” did this to us, we are on the road to hatred. Envy helps in locating an enemy when no more-convenient one is at hand. When the angry and envious person succeeds in locating another group on which he