Hate as a Fundamental Emotion of Our Being in the World

Hate is the source for severe conflicts that today concern us existentially in our world. Why do we hate? Does hate contain a fundamental truth? Can hate be cured? In my paper I want to focus on the scope of hostile emotions and attitudes such as hate, resentment, anger, and rage, from a therapeutical viewpoint. My method is daseinsanalysis, a specific psychoanalytic school which combines psychoanalytical insights with existential philosophical insights. My patient, Martin, came to therapy complaining of irrational aggressive actions as a reaction to feeling restricted by others in his own aims. In therapy we understood that Martin's childhood experiences with his authoritarian father had made him extremely sensitive to the danger of being hindered in leading a self-determined life. He misinterpreted harmless situations according to the traumatic past. Philosophically seen, Martin was revolting against a basic human truth, the truth of the Otherness of the others. Living together with others inevitably means restriction in freedom, as the philosopher J.-P. Sartre elaborates. Many dreams show Martin's struggle with this problem. But finally he could forgive his father, now able to meet the other in a satisfactory and non-conflictual way.