Prisoners Of Hate

Aaron T. Beck

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780062046000
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicología clínica

" Prisoners of Hate offers a profound analysis of a most pressing human challenge: the causes—and prevention—of hatred. Of the many important books Aaron Beck has written, this may be his greatest gift to humanity." —Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

World-renowned psychiatrist Dr. Aaron T. Beck has always been at the forefront of cognitive therapy research, his approach being the most rapidly growing psychotherapy today. In his most important work to date, the widely hailed father of cognitive therapy presents a revolutionary look at destructive behavior—from domestic abuse to genocide to war—and provides a solid framework for remedying these crucial problems.

In this book, Dr. Beck:

• Illustrates the specific psychological aberrations underlying anger, interpersonal hostility, ethnic conflict, genocide, and war;
• Clarifies why perpetrators of evil deeds are motivated by a belief that they are doing good;
• Explains how the offenders are locked into distorted belief systems that control their behavior and shows how the same distortions in thinking occur in a rampaging mob as in an enraged spouse;
• Provides a blueprint for correcting warped thinking and belief systems and, consequently, undercutting various forms of hostility; and
• Discusses how the individual and society as a whole might use the tools of psychotherapy to block the psychological pathways to war, genocide, rape, and murder.

PART 1
THE ROOTS OF HATE

1
THE PRISON OF HATE
How Egoism and Ideology Hijack the Mind

It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of a complex of phenomena that to direct observation appear to be separate things.

Albert Einstein (April 1901)

The violence of humans against humans appalls us but continues to take its toll today. The dazzling technological advances of our era are paralleled by a reversion to the savagery of the Dark Ages: unimaginable horrors of war and wanton annihilation of ethnic, religious, and political groups. We have succeeded in conquering many deadly diseases, yet we have witnessed the horrors of thousands of murdered people floating down the rivers of Rwanda, innocent civilians driven from their homes and massacred in Kosovo, and blood flowing in the killing fields of Cambodia. Wherever we look, east or west, north or south, we see persecution, violence, and genocide.¹

In less dramatic ways, crime and violence reign in our countries and cities. There seem to be no limits to the personal misery people inflict on one another. Close, even intimate, relationships crumble under the impact of uncontrolled anger. Child abuse and spouse abuse pose a challenge to legal as well as mental health authorities. Prejudice, discrimination, and racism continue to divide our pluralistic society.

The scientific advances of the age are mocked by the stasis in our ability to understand and solve these interpersonal and societal problems. What can be done to prevent the misery inflicted on the abused child, the battered wife? How can we reduce the medical complications of hostility, including soaring blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes? What guidelines can be developed to address the broader manifestations of hostility that tear apart the fabric of civilization? What can the policy makers and social engineers—and the average citizens—do? Sociologists, psychologists, and political scientists have made concerted efforts to analyze the social and economic factors leading to crime, violence, and war. Yet the problems remain.

A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Sometimes a relatively isolated experience can expose the inner structure of a phenomenon. I received a clear insight into the nature of hostility many years ago when I was its target. I had received the usual laudatory introduction at a book-signing event in a large bookstore and had just completed a few introductory remarks to an audience of colleagues and other scholars. Suddenly, a middle-aged man, whom I shall call Rob, approached me in a confrontational manner. I recalled later that he seemed “different”—stiff, tense, his eyes glaring. We had the following interchange:

Rob (sarcastic tone): Congratulations! You certainly drew a large crowd.

ATB: Thanks. I enjoy getting together with my friends.

Rob: I suppose you enjoy being the center of attention.

ATB: Well, it helps to sell books.

Rob (angry tone): I guess you think you’re better than me.

ATB: No. I’m just another person.

Rob: You know what I think of you? You’re just a phony.

ATB: I hope not.

At this point it was clear that Rob’s hostility was rising, that he was getting out of control. Several of my friends moved in and, after a brief scuffle, led him out of the store.

Although this scene might be dismissed as simply the irrational behavior of a disturbed person, I believe it shows, in bold relief, several facets of hostility. The exaggerations in the thinking and behavior of clinical patients often delineate the nature of adaptive as well as excessive human reactions. As I reflect on the incident now, I can note a number of features that illustrate some universal mechanisms involved in the triggering and expression of hostility.

First, why did Rob take my performance as a personal affront, as though I were in some way injuring him? What struck me—and was obvious to the other observers with a background in psychology—was the egocentricity of his reaction: he interpreted the recognition I received as having diminished him in some way. Such a reaction, although extreme, probably is not as puzzling as it may seem. Others in the audience may have been thinking about their own professional status—whether they deserved recognition—and may have experienced regret of envy. Rob, however, was totally absorbed in how my position reflected on him; he personalized the experience as though he and I were adversaries, competing for the same prize.

Rob’s exaggerated self-focus set the stage for his anger and his desire to attack me. He was impelled to make an invidious comparison between the two of us, and in accord with his egocentric perspective, he presumed that others would consider him less important than I, perhaps less worthy. Also, he felt left out, because he was receiving none of the attention and friendship that were being given to me.

The sense of social isolation, of being disregarded by the rest of the group, undoubtedly hurt him, a reaction commonly reported by patients in like situations. But why didn’t he simply experience disappointment or regret? Why the anger and hatred? After all, I was not doing anything to him. Yet he perceived an injustice in the proceedings: I was no more deserving of recognition than he was. Therefore, since he was wronged, he was entitled to feel angry. But he carried this further. His statement, “You think you’re better than me,” shows the degree to which he personalized our interaction. He imagined what my view of him would be, and then projected it into my mind, as if he knew what I was thinking (something I call the projected image). In essence Rob was using (actually overusing) a frequent and mostly adaptive device: mind-reading.

Reading other people’s minds, to some extent, is a crucial adaptive mechanism. Unless we can judge other people’s attitudes and intentions toward us with some degree of accuracy, we are continuously vulnerable, stumbling blindly through life. Some authors have noted a deficiency in this capability in autistic children, who are oblivious to other people’s thinking and feeling.² In contrast, Rob’s interpersonal sensitivity and mind-reading were exaggerated and distorted. His projected social image became a reality for him, and with no evidence at all, he believed that he knew what I thought of him. He attributed derogatory thoughts to me, which inflamed him even more. He felt a pressure to retaliate against me because, according to his logic, I had wronged him. I was the Enemy.³

The egocentric monitoring of events to ascertain their significance, as demonstrated by Rob, is discernible throughout the animal kingdom and is apparently embedded in our genes. Self-protection, as well as self-promotion, is crucial to our survival; both acts help us to detect transgressions and take appropriate defensive actions. Also, without this kind of investment in ourselves we would not seek the pleasures we gain from intimate relations, friendships, and affiliation with groups. Egocentricity is a problem, however, when it becomes exaggerated and is not balanced by such social traits as love, empathy, and altruism, the capacity for which is probably also represented in our genome. Interestingly, very few of us think to look for egocentricity in ourselves, although we are dazzled by it in others.

Once an individual becomes aroused to fight in an ordinary dispute, all of his senses are focused on the Enemy. In some instances this intense narrow focus and mobilization for aggressive action may be life-saving; for example, when one is subjected to physical attack. In most cases, however, the reflexive image of the Enemy creates destructive hatred between individuals and between groups. Although these individuals or groups may feel liberated from restraints against attacking the supposed adversary, such people have actually surrendered their freedom of choice, abdicated their rationality, and are now the prisoners of a primal thinking mechanism.

How can we enable people to recognize and control this automatic mechanism so that they can behave in a more thoughtful, moral way toward each other?

THE HOSTILE FRAME

These egocentric components of anger and aggression have been confirmed by my professional work with patients, but the experience with Rob was my most dramatic public experience. I have wondered for many years whether the insights into human problems gleaned from the psychotherapy of troubled individuals could be generalized to apply to societal problems of violence within families, communities, national groups, and states. Although these domains appear to be remote from each other, the themes underlying anger and hatred in close relationships appear to be similar to those manifested by antagonistic groups and nations. The overreactions of friends, associates, and marital partners to presumed wrongs and offenses are paralleled by the hostile responses of people in confrontation with members of different religious, ethnic, or racial groups. The fury of a betrayed husband or lover resembles that of a member of a militant group who believes his cherished principles and values have been betrayed by his own government. Finally, the biased, distorted thinking of a paranoid patient is akin to the thinking of perpetrators embarking on a program of genocide.

When I was first concerned with the psychotherapy of distressed couples, it became clear that, at least in severe cases, simply coaching people on how to change their distressing behavior—in essence how to “do the right thing”—would not provide a durable solution. No matter how committed they were to following a proposed constructive plan of action, reasonable communication and civil behavior vanished when they became angry with each other.⁴

A clue to their inability to adhere to prescribed guidelines when they felt hurt or threatened lay in their misinterpretation of each other’s behavior. “Catastrophic” distortions of each other’s motives and attitudes led each partner to feel trapped, injured, and depreciated. These perceptions (or rather, misperceptions) filled them with anger—even hatred—and impelled them to retaliate or to withdraw into hostile isolation.

It was clear that the chronically feuding couples had developed a negative “frame” of each other. In a typical case, each partner saw himself or herself as the victim and the other partner as the villain. Each partner blotted out the favorable attributes of the other as well as the pleasant memories of more tranquil days, or reinterpreted them as false. The process of framing led them to suspect each other’s motives and to make biased generalizations about the deficiencies or “badness” of the mate.⁵ This rigid negative thinking was in marked contrast to the many ways in which they could flexibly think through solutions to problems encountered in relationships outside their marriage. Their minds, in a sense, were usurped by a kind of primal thinking that forced them to feel mistreated and to behave in an antagonistic manner toward the presumed foe.

There was a bright side to this clinical picture, however. When I helped the partners to focus on their biased thinking about each other and to reframe their negative images, they were able to judge each other in a less pejorative, more realistic way. In many instances they were able to recapture their previous affectionate feelings and form a more stable, satisfying marital relationship. Sometimes the vestiges of their biased perspectives were so strong that the partners decided to separate—but in an amicable way. We could then attain a kind of balanced partition of the family. Relieved of their hatred for each other, the former partners could work out a reasonable settlement of custody and financial issues. Since this approach to couples’ problems focused on biased thinking and cognitive distortions, I labeled the treatment “cognitive marital therapy.”⁶

I noted the same type of hostile framing and biased thinking in encounters between siblings, parents and children, employers and employees. Each adversary inevitably believed he or she had been wronged and the other persons were contemptible, controlling, and manipulative. They would make arbitrary—often distorted—interpretations of the motives of those with whom they were in conflict. They would take an impersonal statement as a personal affront, attribute malice to an innocent mistake, and overgeneralize the other’s unpleasant actions (“You always put me down…. You never treat me as a person”).

I observed that even people who were not psychiatric patients were susceptible to this kind of dysfunctional thinking. They routinely framed out-group members negatively, just as they framed their everyday friends or relatives with whom they were in conflict. This kind of negative framing also appeared to be at the core of negative social stereotypes, religious prejudice, and intolerance. A similar sort of biased thinking seemed to be a driving force in ideological aggression and warfare.

People in conflict perceive and react to the threat emanating from the image rather than to a realistic appraisal of the adversary. They mistake the image for the person.⁷ The most negative frame contains an image of the adversary as dangerous, malicious, and evil. Whether applied to a hostile spouse or to members of an unfriendly foreign power, the fixed negative representation is backed up by selective memories of past wrongs, real or imaginary, and malevolent attributions. Their minds are encased in “the prison of hate.” In ethnic, national, or international conflict, myths about the Enemy are propagated, giving the image a further dimension.

Insights about harmful behavior can be gleaned from a variety of clinical sources. Patients being treated for substance abuse, as well as other patients who receive the diagnosis of “antisocial personality,” provide rich material for an understanding of the mechanisms of anger and destructive behavior.

Bill, a thirty-five-year-old salesman, was addicted to a variety of street drugs and was particularly prone to rage reactions and to physical abuse of his wife and children, as well as to frequent fights with outsiders. As we collaboratively explored the sequence of psychological experiences, we found that when another person (his wife or an outsider) did not show him “respect,” as he defined it, he would become so enraged that he wanted to punch or even demolish that person.

Through a “microanalysis” of his rapid-fire reactions, we found that between the other person’s statement or action and his own flare-up, Bill experienced a self-demeaning thought and a hurt feeling. His typical self-deflating interpretation leading to this unpleasant feeling occurred almost instantaneously: “He thinks I’m a wimp,” or, “She doesn’t respect me.”

When Bill learned to detect and evaluate this intervening painful thought, he could recognize that his interpretation of being put down did not necessarily follow from the actual comment or behavior of the other person. I was then able to clarify the beliefs that shaped his hostile reaction. A primary belief, for example, was, “If people disagree with me, it means they don’t respect me.” What then provoked Bill to attack the offender were his afterthoughts, which were conscious and compelling: “I need to show them they can’t get away with this, so they’ll know I’m not a wimp, that they can’t push me around.” It was important for Bill to recognize that these punitive afterthoughts were the result of his feeling hurt, which was covered over by his anger. Our therapeutic work consisted of examining Bill’s beliefs and helping him to understand that he could obtain more respect from his family and acquaintances by being “cool” and controlled than belligerent and irascible.

The clues obtained from analyzing ...