"The world is full of hate but few people know how to hate well". So begins Gerald Schoenewolf's study of hate. His main argument is that most people hate in destructive ways. As individuals we routinely act out hateful feelings - from jealousy to loathing to bitterness to contempt to disgust to irritation to rage - with hardly a backward glance. We are concerned with the immediate need to protect ourselves, or to get and create a climate of animosity and distrust. To hate well, we must be able to distinguish between our objective and subjective hate, willing to risk verbalizing the objective hate and determined to ride out the consequences of verbalizing it. This book explores the many ways people express subjective hate - including characterological, perverse, cultural, political, sexual and parent-child hate. It provides a history of the development of the art of hating in the psychotherapeutic laboratory, and then a chapter on the "art of hating in everyday life".
In a final chapter, "The Future of Hate", Schoenewolf confesses that this book is itself an expression of hate - objective hate - which he hopes will move readers to become more aware of how their subjective hate impedes them, It is written without psychoanalytic jargon and aims to be of interest to both professionals and lay people.