CHAPTER IX
Hatred and Love
Hatred and love seem diametrically opposed feelings. Yet there are many cases when love masquerades as hatred and hatred as love.
Altho such hatred and such love are not genuine they may drive us at times into acts of cruelty or self-sacrifice which to all appearances seem to emanate from perfect love or from savage hatred.
Very exaggerated feelings should always be viewed suspiciously as blinds for the opposite feelings. An extravagant display of affection is generally a desperate attempt on the person indulging in that display at repressing loathing and hatred. On the other hand, morbid hostility toward one person is generally an attempt at repressing a love which would be unjustifiable or detrimental for the personality.
A few illustrations from life will make my meaning clear.
A Worried Wife. One woman I analysed was thrown into hysterical anxiety whenever her husband reached home a little late. She pictured him dead, dismembered by a train or knocked down by robbers. When she first called on me, she stressed the struggle going on in her heart. She loved two men and her nobility of soul, her delicacy of feelings, and many other qualities she bestowed on herself very liberally, were making that double life unbearable for her. "I have wronged my dear, dear, hubby," she kept repeating. "And he is so good, so kind, so considerate."
The wife who never tires of singing her husband's praise is always somebody else's mistress. It is generally her way of settling accounts with her conscience.
In this case, the anxiety she felt over her husband's whereabouts and health when he was late in reaching home, supplied the expiation which neurotics seem to crave for their misdeeds.
But there was more in that anxiety than one of the manifestations of her sense of sin. I asked her whether she had ever experienced the same anxiety when her lover was late in coming to their trysting place.