Readings on hatred/aggression in love?
June 20, 2024 4:20 AM Subscribe
I'm interested theorizations of the weird phenomenon where human love or care often comes with an element of hatred or aggression built into it. Classic or modern, and any rigorous disciplinary approach (biology, philosophy, theology, literature, history) is fine, although ideally not pop psychology at the Blink level. What should I add to my list?
I'm not so much interested in the possibility of positive and negative emotions coexisting, as in situations where they are bound together with one another. Examples might include:
-The preponderance of human sexual fetishes that involve simulated harm or aggression, including submissive ones that theoretically give permission to hate or resist the dominant partner
-Conversely, the tendency of sexual behaviors to crop up as expressions of aggression in wartime and similar
-"Dimorphous" cuteness responses, where people get an impulse to cuddle the baby/puppy but also to bite or squeeze it
-Codependency and similar relationship dynamics where care is heightened by being mixed with some contempt
-Kids' arbitrary interest in destructive, aggressive behaviors toward their toys
Ideally I'd love readings that work toward explanations or genealogies, or that add illuminating angles or surprising empirical evidence, not just "guys have you noticed" or "here are some of the implications."
Evo-psych is OK if it's very good evo-psych. I would like to avoid readings that use this phenomenon to reflect on contemporary US politics.
Thanks in advance!
I'm not so much interested in the possibility of positive and negative emotions coexisting, as in situations where they are bound together with one another. Examples might include:
-The preponderance of human sexual fetishes that involve simulated harm or aggression, including submissive ones that theoretically give permission to hate or resist the dominant partner
-Conversely, the tendency of sexual behaviors to crop up as expressions of aggression in wartime and similar
-"Dimorphous" cuteness responses, where people get an impulse to cuddle the baby/puppy but also to bite or squeeze it
-Codependency and similar relationship dynamics where care is heightened by being mixed with some contempt
-Kids' arbitrary interest in destructive, aggressive behaviors toward their toys
Ideally I'd love readings that work toward explanations or genealogies, or that add illuminating angles or surprising empirical evidence, not just "guys have you noticed" or "here are some of the implications."
Evo-psych is OK if it's very good evo-psych. I would like to avoid readings that use this phenomenon to reflect on contemporary US politics.
Thanks in advance!
I recently finished Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, and Traumatophilia by Avgi Saketopoulou and it might speak to your interests here.
posted by obliterati at 5:01 AM on June 20 [2 favorites]
posted by obliterati at 5:01 AM on June 20 [2 favorites]
The science fiction classic The Screwfly Solution feels appropriate for this topic.
posted by foxfirefey at 8:06 AM on June 20
posted by foxfirefey at 8:06 AM on June 20
Dora's a locus classicus [NIH];
See also Overwhelming and Collective Murder: the grand, gruesome theories of René Girard [Harper’s] (tho maybe pop psychology at the Blink level, wrt “billionaire venture capitalist is now a relentless evangelist for his old teacher’s ideas”: mimetic desire [wiki; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy])
book i’m currently reading, The Emergence of Social Space [gbooks], vii: “there will always be those, more dedicated and selfless than oneself, who refuse to endorse the values of pleasure and bodily well-being until the conditions have been created in which these values may be available for all.”
posted by HearHere at 8:25 AM on June 20
See also Overwhelming and Collective Murder: the grand, gruesome theories of René Girard [Harper’s] (tho maybe pop psychology at the Blink level, wrt “billionaire venture capitalist is now a relentless evangelist for his old teacher’s ideas”: mimetic desire [wiki; Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy])
book i’m currently reading, The Emergence of Social Space [gbooks], vii: “there will always be those, more dedicated and selfless than oneself, who refuse to endorse the values of pleasure and bodily well-being until the conditions have been created in which these values may be available for all.”
posted by HearHere at 8:25 AM on June 20
Sianne Ngai's writing about cuteness (in Our Aesthetic Categories) addresses this directly. Here's an overview that could give you a sense of whether or not you want to read the full essay.
posted by dizziest at 11:23 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]
posted by dizziest at 11:23 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]
D. W. Winnicott's "Hate In The Countertransference" is exactly what you are looking for. You can google it to find PDFs aplenty. Here is a discussion of it.
An excerpt:
"A Mother's Love and Hate
Out of all the complexity of the problem of hate and its roots I want to rescue one thing, because I believe it has an importance for the analyst of psychotic patients. I suggest that the mother hates the baby before the baby hates the mother, and before the baby can know his mother hates him.
...
The mother ... hates her infant from the word go. I believe Freud thought it possible that a mother may under certain circumstances have only love for her boy baby; but we may doubt this. We know about a mother's love and we appreciate its reality and power. Let me give some of the reasons why a mother hates her baby, even a boy.
A. The baby is not her own (mental) conception.
B. The baby is not the one of childhood play, father's child, brother's child, etc. [or a doll]
C. The baby is not magically produced.
D. The baby is a danger to her body in pregnancy and at birth.
E. The baby is an interference with her private life, a challenge to preoccupation.
F. To a greater or lesser extent a mother feels that her own mother demands a baby, so that her baby is produced to placate her mother.
G. The baby hurts her nipples even by suckling, which is at first a chewing activity.
H. He is ruthless, treats her as scum, an unpaid servant, a slave.
I. She has to love him, excretions and all, at any rate at the beginning, till he has doubts about himself.
J. He tries to hurt her, periodically bites her, all in love.
K. He shows disillusionment about her.
L. His excited love is cupboard love, so that having got what he wants he throws her away like orange peel.
M. The baby at first must dominate, he must be protected from coincidences, life must unfold at the baby's rate and all this needs his mother's continuous and detailed study. For instance, she must not be anxious when holding him, etc.
N. At first he does not know at all what she does or what she sacrifices for him. Especially he cannot allow for her hate.
O. He is suspicious, refuses her good food, and makes her doubt herself, but eats well with his aunt.
P. After an awful morning with him she goes out, and he smiles at a stranger, who says: 'Isn't he sweet!'
Q. If she fails him at the start she knows he will pay her out for ever.
R. He excites her but frustrates—she mustn't eat him or trade in sex with him.
....
A mother has to be able to tolerate hating her baby without doing anything about it. She cannot express it to him. If, for fear of what she may do, she cannot hate appropriately when hurt by her child she must fall back on masochism, and I think it is this that gives rise to the false theory of a natural masochism in women. The most remarkable thing about a mother is her ability to be hurt so much by her baby and to hate so much without paying the child out, and her ability to wait for rewards that may or may not come at a later date. Perhaps she is helped by some of the nursery rhymes she sings, which her baby enjoys but fortunately does not understand?
'Rockabye Baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle and all.'
I think of a mother (or father) playing with a small infant; the infant enjoying the play and not knowing that the parent is expressing hate in the words, perhaps in birth symbolism. This is not a sentimental rhyme. Sentimentality is useless for parents, as it contains a denial of hate, and sentimentality in a mother is no good at all from the infant's point of view.
It seems to me doubtful whether a human child as he develops is capable of tolerating the full extent of his own hate in a sentimental environment. He needs hate to hate."
posted by MiraK at 12:30 PM on June 20 [5 favorites]
An excerpt:
"A Mother's Love and Hate
Out of all the complexity of the problem of hate and its roots I want to rescue one thing, because I believe it has an importance for the analyst of psychotic patients. I suggest that the mother hates the baby before the baby hates the mother, and before the baby can know his mother hates him.
...
The mother ... hates her infant from the word go. I believe Freud thought it possible that a mother may under certain circumstances have only love for her boy baby; but we may doubt this. We know about a mother's love and we appreciate its reality and power. Let me give some of the reasons why a mother hates her baby, even a boy.
A. The baby is not her own (mental) conception.
B. The baby is not the one of childhood play, father's child, brother's child, etc. [or a doll]
C. The baby is not magically produced.
D. The baby is a danger to her body in pregnancy and at birth.
E. The baby is an interference with her private life, a challenge to preoccupation.
F. To a greater or lesser extent a mother feels that her own mother demands a baby, so that her baby is produced to placate her mother.
G. The baby hurts her nipples even by suckling, which is at first a chewing activity.
H. He is ruthless, treats her as scum, an unpaid servant, a slave.
I. She has to love him, excretions and all, at any rate at the beginning, till he has doubts about himself.
J. He tries to hurt her, periodically bites her, all in love.
K. He shows disillusionment about her.
L. His excited love is cupboard love, so that having got what he wants he throws her away like orange peel.
M. The baby at first must dominate, he must be protected from coincidences, life must unfold at the baby's rate and all this needs his mother's continuous and detailed study. For instance, she must not be anxious when holding him, etc.
N. At first he does not know at all what she does or what she sacrifices for him. Especially he cannot allow for her hate.
O. He is suspicious, refuses her good food, and makes her doubt herself, but eats well with his aunt.
P. After an awful morning with him she goes out, and he smiles at a stranger, who says: 'Isn't he sweet!'
Q. If she fails him at the start she knows he will pay her out for ever.
R. He excites her but frustrates—she mustn't eat him or trade in sex with him.
....
A mother has to be able to tolerate hating her baby without doing anything about it. She cannot express it to him. If, for fear of what she may do, she cannot hate appropriately when hurt by her child she must fall back on masochism, and I think it is this that gives rise to the false theory of a natural masochism in women. The most remarkable thing about a mother is her ability to be hurt so much by her baby and to hate so much without paying the child out, and her ability to wait for rewards that may or may not come at a later date. Perhaps she is helped by some of the nursery rhymes she sings, which her baby enjoys but fortunately does not understand?
'Rockabye Baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, cradle and all.'
I think of a mother (or father) playing with a small infant; the infant enjoying the play and not knowing that the parent is expressing hate in the words, perhaps in birth symbolism. This is not a sentimental rhyme. Sentimentality is useless for parents, as it contains a denial of hate, and sentimentality in a mother is no good at all from the infant's point of view.
It seems to me doubtful whether a human child as he develops is capable of tolerating the full extent of his own hate in a sentimental environment. He needs hate to hate."
posted by MiraK at 12:30 PM on June 20 [5 favorites]
Seconding Winnicott; I've been reading a lot of his work lately and it is brilliant. The entwinement of aggression and love is a tremendously important theme and comes up often in the essays, even when not obvious from the title. His 1958 essay, "Psychoanalysis and the Sense of Guilt" is a key one for me (it turns out that the later sense of guilt comes from the early interrelation between aggression and love and is important for moral development in adult life).
A really fascinating recent expansion of these Winnicottian themes is Sally Swartz's 2018 book, Ruthless Winnicott: The role of ruthlessness in psychoanalysis and political protest, which applies Winnicott's key idea of 'ruthlessness' in early object relationships to adult social and political phenomena (including decolonization in South Africa). Extremely thought provoking stuff on the love/aggression linkage.
Melanie Klein is another psychoanalyst who dealt extensively with the early infant love/hate dynamic and its implications for adult psychology. Winnicott seems to disagree with her on a lot of technical points but I am not well-versed enough yet to comment on their disagreements.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 4:06 PM on June 20 [1 favorite]
A really fascinating recent expansion of these Winnicottian themes is Sally Swartz's 2018 book, Ruthless Winnicott: The role of ruthlessness in psychoanalysis and political protest, which applies Winnicott's key idea of 'ruthlessness' in early object relationships to adult social and political phenomena (including decolonization in South Africa). Extremely thought provoking stuff on the love/aggression linkage.
Melanie Klein is another psychoanalyst who dealt extensively with the early infant love/hate dynamic and its implications for adult psychology. Winnicott seems to disagree with her on a lot of technical points but I am not well-versed enough yet to comment on their disagreements.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 4:06 PM on June 20 [1 favorite]
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posted by stinker at 4:31 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]