This Jungian Life Podcast Signs Contempt Is Ruining Your Relationship & Ways to Cope
Nov 20, 2025
Contempt can deeply wound relationships, acting like a cold distance that undermines empathy. It reveals insecurities and projects shame onto others, often manifesting through eye-rolling and sarcasm. The discussion digs into how contempt thrives on a false sense of superiority and can replace love. Fascinating psychological concepts like disowned shame and developmental roots are explored. The hosts propose transforming contempt into curiosity as a pathway to deeper understanding, along with the importance of humility in healing.
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Contempt Cuts Off Relatedness
- Contempt is a cold, distancing attitude that devalues people and avoids solving real problems.
- It projects shame, fear, or hurt onto others and erodes empathy and connection.
When Love Is Replaced By Power
- Contempt replaces love with power and assumes the other is worthless rather than addressable.
- That shift removes Eros and turns relationships into dominance plays.
Measuring A Contempt Disposition
- The Dispositional Contempt Scale captures contempt as a stable stance of disregarding people who fall short.
- High scores indicate a predisposition to view others as wasteful or beneath respect.
