On Hatred

I remember the first time I truly wrestled with my own hatred regarding the destruction of the environment. It happened a few years ago while I was watching news footage of another oil spill devastating pristine waters. The familiar surge of rage rose within me, but this time, I stayed with it instead of turning away. The screen reflected back not just environmental catastrophe but my own complicity in the systems that perpetuate it. My car keys sat heavy in my pocket. The plastic water bottle on my desk suddenly felt like an accusation. In that moment of recognition, I understood something essential about hatred’s dual nature—how it can both separate us from and bind us to the very things we claim to despise.

This convergence of personal recognition and systemic violence has led me to explore hatred not just as a clinical phenomenon but as a mirror reflecting the fractured relationship between our inner and outer worlds. The recent work of Sue Grand (2023) on “perpetrator fragments” resonates deeply with this exploration. These fragments, she argues, are not just psychological residue but living ghosts of historical trauma that haunt our attempts at connection. They are the invisible threads that tie our personal grievances to collective wounds, making the boundary between individual and societal hatred increasingly permeable.

In my consulting room, these threads become visible in unexpected ways. A patient—let’s call her Sarah—once spent several sessions exploring her hatred of corporate executives who prioritize profit over planetary well-being. “I hate them all,” she declared, hands gripping the armchair, knuckles white with tension. “The politicians, the CEOs, everyone who’s destroying our future.” As she spoke, I noticed a subtle shift in her posture, a slight collapse inward. “But really,” she continued, her voice softening, “I hate myself for not doing more.” 

Her words struck a chord with my own struggle with environmental activism’s insufficiency against the machinery of ecological destruction. In that moment, I recognized how hatred often functions as a defense against more-vulnerable feelings of powerlessness and grief. The perpetrator fragments that Grand describes seemed to be at work here—Sarah’s hatred of corporate leaders contained elements of her own internalized aggression, her sense of complicity in systems of destruction.

The consulting room itself becomes a container for these complex dynamics. Another patient, deeply involved in climate activism, spoke of his recurring nightmare in which he transformed into the very oil executives he despised. In his dream, he found himself signing permits for drilling, rationalizing destruction with the same arguments he fought against in his waking life. This dream material revealed hatred’s uncanny ability to create unconscious identifications with its objects, a phenomenon that Grand’s work helps us understand through the lens of perpetrator introjects.

This interplay between personal and collective hatred feels particularly relevant in our current moment. Josh Cohen’s (2024) exploration of this emotional state in All the Rage illuminates how our digital landscape has transformed anger into a commodity, packaged and sold back to us through social media’s endless scroll. I notice this in my own behavior—how easily righteous anger about climate change can dissolve into the false comfort of simply sharing an article, the momentary satisfaction of adding my voice to the digital chorus. The algorithms that feed our news feeds seem designed to keep us in a state of perpetual agitation, what Cohen calls the “permanent rage economy.”

Walking through recent climate protests in London, I witnessed both focused and dispersed expressions of rage that Peter Sloterdijk’s work helps us understand. The organised chants and coordinated actions represented what he calls “banked rage”—focused, purposeful, collective. But I also saw the scattered, individual expressions of frustration: the lone person screaming at police, the cynical tweets shared from the sidelines. I recognized myself in both expressions, understanding how easily one can slip into the other.

The transformation between these forms of rage often hinges on what Grand calls “dialogues of rage”—spaces where hatred can be explored without either suppression or acting out. Recently, I’ve begun hosting monthly “grief circles” in my consulting room, repurposed for the evening into a community space. During one particularly powerful session, a group of climate activists gathered to share their experiences of eco-anxiety and rage.

As we sat in a circle, one participant—a former corporate lawyer turned environmental advocate—spoke of her hatred for her former colleagues who continue to facilitate environmental destruction. As she spoke, her narrative began to shift. The hatred that initially presented as righteous anger toward external others gradually revealed deeper layers: shame about her own past participation in corporate harm, grief for lost professional relationships, fear about an uncertain future. The group held these revelations with remarkable tenderness, creating space for hatred to reveal its underlying wounds.

Another participant, a young teacher, shared her rage at industrial pollution, only to break down crying about the asthma her child developed living near a factory. Her hatred of corporate polluters was inextricably linked to maternal grief and guilt—feelings that could only emerge when her anger was witnessed without judgment. A farmer spoke of his fury at corporate agriculture, his voice cracking as he described watching his family’s land destroyed during increasingly severe floods. In these moments, individual hatred began to transform into a shared recognition of vulnerability and loss.

This collective holding of hatred points toward what a psychopolitical praxis might look like. It’s not about managing or suppressing these difficult emotions but about creating containers strong enough to hold them while they transform. In my own journey, I’ve found that acknowledging my hatred—of environmental destroyers, of systemic injustice, of my own complicity—opens space for a more nuanced engagement with both activism and analysis.

The clinical implications of this understanding are significant. When working with patients grappling with eco-anxiety and environmental grief, I’ve learned to pay attention to hatred’s protective function. Often, it serves as a shield against overwhelming feelings of helplessness and loss. One patient, an environmental scientist, initially presented with intense hatred toward climate change deniers. As we explored this hatred together, it gradually revealed itself as a defense against the terror of his own scientific predictions. His hatred of deniers protected him from fully facing the implications of his research.

This defensive function of hatred appears in subtle ways across my practice. A young activist’s contempt for “apathetic” family members masked her deep fear of alienating loved ones through her environmental commitments. A businessman’s hatred of “extreme” environmentalists concealed his guilt about his industry’s environmental impact. In each case, hatred served as both a shield and a bridge—protecting against unbearable feelings while simultaneously pointing toward them.

The hatred I feel watching another forest burn or another species disappear hasn’t lessened. But it has grown more complex, more connected to love—love for what remains, for what might yet be saved, for the human capacity to face terrible truths and still work toward change. This is perhaps what Grand means when she speaks of hatred’s ambivalence: its potential to both destroy and, when properly held, to catalyze transformation.

In the consulting room, this transformation often begins with small moments of recognition. A patient recently shared her shame about feeling hatred toward her young children when they demand plastic toys or insist on car rides to school. As we explored these feelings together, her hatred revealed itself as a complex knot of maternal love, environmental conscience, and societal pressure. By acknowledging these “unacceptable” feelings without judgment, we created space for a more integrated relationship with both her children and her environmental values.

The clinical work of holding hatred requires a delicate balance. Too much focus on its destructive aspects can reinforce shame and inhibit exploration. Too quick a move toward transformation can bypass necessary encounters with grief and rage. I think of it as being similar to working with dreams—hatred, like dream material, needs to be approached with curiosity rather than immediate interpretation or resolution.

As I write this, my office window frames a sky heavy with unseasonable warmth. The weather itself seems to mirror our collective disorder. Yet on my desk sits a small potted plant, recently given to me by a patient who has begun transforming her climate anxiety into community garden work. It reminds me that even in our hatred of destruction, we can find seeds of regeneration.

The challenge, both personally and collectively, is to remain present with hatred’s intelligence without being consumed by its fire. This requires creating spaces—in our consulting rooms, our communities, our political movements—where hatred can be witnessed and metabolized rather than simply acted out or suppressed. Only then might we discover what lies beyond hatred: not its absence but its evolution into something that connects rather than divides, which creates rather than destroys.

In the end, hatred may be one of our most honest responses to a world in crisis. It marks the places where our love for life encounters its destruction, where our desire for connection meets systemic alienation. By learning to hold hatred with consciousness and care, we might transform it from a force of separation into a catalyst for collective healing and action.

References

Cohen, Josh (2024). All the Rage: Why Anger Drives the World. London: Granta Books.
Grand, Sue (2023). “On Hatred: Perpetrator Fragments and Totalitarian Objects.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 33:4, pp. 543−60.
Sloterdijk, Peter (2006). Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation. New York: Columbia University Press.