88: On Hate and Aggression, Part IV Teaser

Feb 1, 2025

Dive into a thought-provoking discussion on the complex nature of hate and aggression. Explore how everyday situations reflect displaced feelings of hate and how societal ideologies channel aggression while disavowing hate. The conversation touches on theologies like 'hating the sin but loving the sinner' and examines the blame game in politics, revealing the cruelty enjoyed across party lines. Gain insights into how hate is used to disqualify and condemn groups, all while maintaining a facade of legitimacy.

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Understanding Hate and Political Animosity

00:00 • 3min

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Abby, Patrick, and Dan put Winnicott’s ideas about hate and aggression to work. What everyday situations, personal experiences, and institutional practices get clarified when we consider them as reflecting displaced feelings of hate? What do popular beliefs about hate look like when seen in Winnicottian terms, and how might familiar ideologies actually rely on channeling aggression while disavowing hate and even championing values like justice, family, and love? The conversation leads Abby, Patrick, and Dan to consider everything from theologies of “hating the sin but loving the sinner” and the injunction to “love your neighbor as yourself” to the differing approaches of Democrats and Republicans when it comes to assigning blame, enjoying cruelty, and claiming collective righteousness. They also explore how the invocation of hate can be flexibly used to disqualify, condemn, or explain away the behavior and motivations of entire groups, mystify material political antagonisms, and even assert dominance in hateful ways while maintaining fantasies about legitimacy, the impersonality of state violence, and much more.

Key texts in addition to Winnicott’s “Hate in the Counter-Transference” and Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents include On Loving, Hating, and Living Well: The Public Psychoanalytic Lectures of Ralph R. Greenson, M.D.

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