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We Hate What We Fear: Interpersonal Hate from a Clinical Perspective

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The Psychology of Love and Hate in Intimate Relationships

Abstract

Despite its common expression and close connection to love in interpersonal relationships, hate is a remarkably understudied phenomenon. This chapter explores a heuristic therapeutic approach to hate in individual and couple therapy. Employing research from divergent sources, interpersonal hate is related to real or imagined betrayal, the discrepancy between what is expected and what is experienced and anger over hurt and loss. Hate is primarily defined as a secondary emotion that arises from fear, including fears of rejection, abandonment, suffocation, and mortality. Clinicians may approach the experience of hate in terms of its interpersonal function, rather than a problem to be reduced or eliminated. Support is provided from extant literature and case examples.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The terms arousal and anxiety are used interchangeably in hundreds of experimental studies of learning and performance (cf. Shapiro 2016). In the clinical literature, the major definitional difference between “anxiety” and “fear” is that the latter has a clear object, whereas anxiety is untied to the specific context.

  2. 2.

    Psychodynamic therapists would call this working through projective identification in the transference relationship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of Counseling Psychology, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA, 95053, USA

    Jerrold Lee Shapiro

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  1. Jerrold Lee Shapiro
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Correspondence to Jerrold Lee Shapiro .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology, Hawaii Pacific University, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

    Katherine Aumer

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Shapiro, J.L. (2016). We Hate What We Fear: Interpersonal Hate from a Clinical Perspective. In: Aumer, K. (eds) The Psychology of Love and Hate in Intimate Relationships. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39277-6_9

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