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HATE IS A MORE SEVERE MANIFESTATION OF ANGER. Whereas anger seems usually to be transient, hate is more perseverating and implies a personal (narcissistic) injury to its bearer. It would seem that hate stands to anger as melancholia stands to mourning. There is no issue of self-esteem in mourning or in anger, but there is in melancholia (Freud, 1917) and hate. It is interesting to learn the phantasies that accompany hate.
It is my impression that the infant phenomenologically begins his career of negativity with angry protests. His first experience, as a matter of fact, that of birth, he meets with a cry of discomfort, presumably for losing his wonderful symmetrical erstwhile home. His anger is his protest—what is felt by him to be, at the moment, intolerable. His demonstrations of anger, consequently, are protests to his “quartermaster”1-mother to correct a situation that is felt to be intolerable at that moment. In other words, anger to the infant is a signal of distress to himself and to his partner, the latter of whom is less helpless than he and therefore better able to correct the situation.