Customer Reviews

Hatred: The Psychological Descent Into Violence

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In an era of mass-marketed books pertaining to jihad, hatred, etc, it's so refreshing to find one that actually gets to the ROOT of hatred. Dr. Gaylin systematically dissects, piece by piece, the mentality of those who hate -- and what's more striking is the simplicity in which it is all delivered.

I am never one who is attracted to dark subjects, but this is so much more than mere horror stories of [end of a race]: it is a study and analysis of the dark side of human nature. The book serves to help us to understand how people born under the same sun as us, when in the right circumstances, commit such unthinkable acts of horror.

A must read.

This is an incredible book, but one with a limited focus. It seeks to better understand how to contain isolated acts of violence associated with hatred, rather than how to deal with the cumulative effects of normalized, sublimated societal hatred-that is hatred permitted and made acceptable by a given culture or society.

It seems that the anecdotal evidence from history would overwhelmingly argue that "normalized" and sublimated cultural and societal hatred in the form of sanctioned "bent-up" resentment and stored hostility (as in the case of the passive assent of Germans to the mechanized murder of Jews during the holocaust of WW-II, or the centuries of sublimated and stored hatred between opposing factions in Yugoslavia or Rwanda, or even the episodic eruption into violence by blacks in America).

While this profoundly serious, well-written and well-researched analysis based both on the best psychological theories and the best results of clinical experience is right on target in the issue it has isolated for analysis-the evil of hatred that spills over into violence--it suffers from what I call "the error of the psychologist." It fails to deal with the issue of how cultures and societies themselves promote collective hatred through its institutions and through conditioning. When hatred that spills over into isolated violence is staked out as being qualitatively different than collective hatred that has been quietly normalized and diffused through the societal mind and through societal structures, it ignores all available evidence that there is such a thing as "structural hatred," a kind of societal pre-positioning of hate, or staging area that prepares and directs a culture towards the kind of hate that is permissible.

While it is understandable why it is currently fashionable to focus on the "Hitlers" and "bin Ladens" of the world, this focusing on the aberrant is itself a form of projection in which ordinary people get to "distance" themselves from the hatred within themselves by projecting it outward onto the isolated aberrant cases. In giving us permission to ignore the hatred within us and to hate any deviations from the norm, it is made all the easier to ignore the generalized collective hatred within the society at large--a hatred which condones and conditions us to passivity-the very kind of passivity that allowed Hitler's holocaust machinery to take full reign.

This may seem like a fine point-so many angels dancing on the head of a pin-but in an era where symbolic hatred is so much easier to formulate, consolidate and direct than hatred based on "real" fears, it is not a small matter at all.

Yes, we must deal with the killers of James Bird, and the Idi Amins and bin Ladens of the world, but we also must deal with cultures of hatred-including that of our own. In the U.S., by the definitions the author uses for hate, Americans still have permission to hate blacks-so long as they do not hitch them to a pick up truck and drag them to their death, or call them "niggers"-at least only do so when paraphrasing Mark Twain's Huck Finn, etc.

This restricting one's clinical vision to what is below rather than what is at or above the societal level makes the Psychiatrist's myopic analyses look a great deal more profound and useful than they really are. We live in a culture where everyone but the Psychiatrists is peering over the head of society looking deep down within its abyss rather than being captivated by what is inside it and looking up.

The Psychiatrists had better wake up or they are going to be left holding the bag. But this criticism aside, this is a great book, much, much better than Rush Dozier's "Why We Hate."

I have only read half of the book so far and I am literally riveted by the writing style and the content of this book. It has opened, for me, a whole new perspective on the difference between those that hate - like the Osama's & Ted Bundy's of the world - and the those that feel an emotional-based rage or anger and may impetuously act on it. It IS an all together different thing to hate in the manner that Dr. Gaylin talks about. Please read this book. As a society we need to stop condoning/romanticizing some behaviors on our own misconceptions of what they are.

The author covered sustancial material from anger, rage, pejudice, bigotry and processes that reach patological hatred. He stated "We can guard against a sense of impotence by reflecting the anger from the self of others, concentrating on who crated the problem rather than who cannot resolve it." It's mean us. "Rage is the public face of fear in most men and many women. The two can be considered as opposite sides of the same coin, the same emergency response. Therefore, to determine what enrages a population, look for what threatens them." So seeing what threatens someone or a culture, you will find what makes them fear. Cultures of hatred and society of haters are covered great readings.

Este libro debe ser leído por mucha gente en Venezuela donde lo descrito por el autor se aplica en gran medida en quienes ocupan cargos públicos en la actualidad. El planteamiento del autor con respecto a la envidia y el resentimiento calzan a perfección con los actuales gritos emitidos por los políticos de turno. Muy bien escrito, exacto, serio, reflexivo, con argumentos científicos, elaborado por un psiquiatra docente universitario. Realmente recomiendo este libro aunque escrito en Ingles es útil leerlo, sobre todo por quienes aman el actual regimen de cosas.

This book should be read by many people in Venezuela because what is described by the author applies heavily on those who hold public office today. The author's approach with regard to the envy and resentment fits perfectly with the current cries emitted by politicians of the day. Very well written, precise, serious, reflective, with scientific arguments made by a psychiatrist, university professor. I highly recommend this book although written in English is useful to read it, especially by those who love the current regime of things here in this small village.

Gaylin's text is eminently readable and coherent. He describes in great detail the processes leading up from prejudice to hatred, which serves to give a richer understand of what hatred actually is. Additionally, Gaylin makes a very worthwhile distinction between the "clinical phenomena" of hatred and the idea of hatred that has become so infused in folk psychology that the two are used interchangably in the popular nomenclature. However it is my opinion that some of the text contained social commentary that was heavy-handed, self-contradictory and uninformed. For example, he woefully underestimates the power of the situation in facilitating hatred or the expression of hatred through brutality. Various psychological experiments (most famously, Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment - http://www.prisonexp.org) have demonstrated how ordinary people can commit extraordinary acts of brutality given the "right" mix of social and environmental factors. Gaylin seems at times to largely discount the environment, but yet notes it's importance in the development and formation of hatred. What's left is a disconnect between the development and the expression of hatred, which leaves this reviewer befuddled.

Gaylin's simplicity and concrete thinking makes this book invaluable for those of us who would like a better understanding of this violent and scary world in which we live.

I have used this book for research a great deal over the past few years. It has provided me with great insight into understanding the mental illness that is Hate. When I first read it I was interested in gaining an informed perspective on the subject, free from own personally biased and limited knowledge. I have returned to it several times for specific guidence towards the resources Dr. Gaylin used to produce it and have always found it to be a concise collection of information to support my research. I would highly recommend it for anyone wishing to gain a thorough understanding of the subject matter. I purchased it because I can always use access to this knowledge.

I read 100 pages of this book while in pure agony and despair, and yet maintained the smallest of hopes that maybe, just maybe, on the next page Gaylin would actually get into something tangible that could be taken WITHOUT a grain of salt, but it never came. Instead there was only endless kitsch-poetic blatherings about the differences between palestinian terrorists and americans with road rage. Terrorists this, blah blah, terrorists that blah blah... It just goes on and on. You'd think from the sound of it he was President Bush after 9/11, he says terrorist so much. This book is disgustingly disappointing. I was hoping to get an honest look at the human condition but I got propaganda. That's what you get for reading a book by a psychoanalyst: a whole lot of case study and thus a whole lot of nothing applicable... Sorry for anyone else who liked this book, but I just can't be honest with myself if I say I do. If you want to read something good about the roots of violent and aggressive behavior in humans, then read Demonic Males by Wrangham. He knows the balance between biological and cultural determinism. Not this guy though. This guy's a waste of time.

I would ask that Willard Gaylin burn his mail-order psychiatric degree and take classes at a real university. How anyone can claim that he is a "leading" theoretician, educator, or anything else in the field, for that matter, astounds this reviewer beyond belief. Such praise should be considered insulting to the rest of psychiatry as a whole.

This book is not "groundbreaking." It presents no new or previously unheard-of information. All that this book accomplishes is the terrible feat of translating old assumptions and excuses about racism/other hatreds, commonly made from an anglo-saxons/Americans first ideology, and the evidence commonly used to support such assumptions into mid-level technical and medical dialogue. Not quite so advanced that the average educated reader can't understand it, but high enough to lower the burden of proof. The author's supposed medical credentials lend him even more undeserved trust.

The result is a book that encourages change, but not in the manner you'd think. Instead of decreasing or raising awareness of hatred, this book demonizes a small portion of that which it claims to fight while justifying and encouraging a great deal more of the same kind of hatred targeted at other groups and individuals.

Who cares about the situation?

Who cares about one's neurological makeup?

Who cares about the fact that violent crime rates in the U.S. are the lowest they've been since the 1960s?

Who cares about any of that?

It was written by a DOCTOR! He must be right!

Nothing's subjective at all! Those filthy arabs are just jealous of America!

It disgusts this reviewer to think that such a pile of 100% grade-A concentrated propaganda can pass as a respectable psychiatric thesis. If this is the "cream of the crop", then psychiatric medicine it might as well be flushed down the toilet.

I would have given this book a lower rating, if I could. Unfortunately, Amazon's user-rating method is incapable of going into negative numbers.