The longest pleasure: a psychoanalytic study of hatred

The ability to hate is a skill indicative of ego development to the level of object constancy. People can be divided into three categories: those who cannot hate, those who hate but can not stop hating, and those who can both hate and get over hating. Among those who cannot stop hating are two sub-groups: those who live with their hatred by relying upon scapegoats, and those who repress their knowledge of their hatred. The latter subgroup includes a number of psychoanalytic patients whose repressed hatred presents a specific obstacle to transference due to the persistence of a blocking introject. Recovery from the complications of repressed hatred requires the analyst to participate in the comforting process that strengthens the patient through the retrieval of aggression lost to repression.