Hate in Groups and the Struggle for Individual Identity

In this paper, I explore the broader significance of the psychoanalytic theory of groups for understanding the distinctive developmental tasks that face individuals and social institutions in the context of a modern society. In considering the significance of the psychoanalytic theory of the group, I emphasize the link between group phenomena and hate. The link between hate and group phenomena arises in part out of the tension between the impulse to regress into the group and give up the process of individuation, and the impulse to pursue autonomy and live the peculiar sort of life made available to, and to a great extent expected of, those born into a modern society. Thus, hatred as a group phenomenon is involved in the struggle of modernity to provide a setting for an individual life, and the difficulties the prospects of living such a life can pose.

I use the term modern not to refer to any particular nations or subnational units, but to a shape of life available to a degree that varies across and within particular nations. Modern ways of life exist side by side with non-modern or traditional ways of life; and, indeed, any individual life can include aspects or moments that we can appropriately refer to as modern and others that we cannot. A modern society is a system of relations and institutions that facilitate modern ways of life. Modern society is, then, an ideal that may be realized to a greater or lesser degree in different settings. In actually existing social systems, modern society appears combined in complex ways with institutions and relations based on other conflicting ideals.

The defining feature of modern ways of life is their incorporation of a norm of the individual as source or origin of his or her action. We can speak of the capacity to act as source or origin in the language of the