Schadenfreude (in adult bullying)

Have you ever been bullied? Maybe this takes you back to your childhood; however, I am asking you this question now. As an adult have you ever been bullied by an intimate partner or a relative? I ask this question again, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation? Domestic Violence takes the lives of 2 women a week, has no boundaries as respect to gender and the police receive at least one phone call a minute about this problem.

I find myself here thinking about psychotherapists like Melanie Klein and Karen Horney and their amazing work on conflict and somehow wonder what it could have been like talking about their ideas and the debates that resulted out of their discussions.

Although Melanie talks quite a bit about the workings of aggressive phantasies and it all sounds a bit crazy to some, I agree that conflict starts at a much earlier time, like in infancy. Whereas Melanie has her view Karen gave me even greater insight having learnt about her subjective experience of finding her father to be quite an authoritarian, that is, someone who needs to be in full control of other people.

I had wondered like Melanie whether that feeling of control starts from birth with a child’s association of the importance of the mother’s breast and the normal feelings of envy and jealousy that are developing at that time. However, taking the development a stage further I wonder how this relates to what Freud talks about when he refers to Narcissism, that is, the normal development of admiration: primary narcissism and the Oedipus Complex, that is, libidinal feelings for one parent and hostility towards the other? What happens if somehow these feelings of admiration and/or hostility are not normally worked through as a child? I wonder if as adults unconsciously they could appear at times in extreme forms as Freud says, 'as energy' that needs to automatically be expressed somehow, whereby some people might choose to express unresolved earlier or later conflict by bullying or being violent.

Schadenfreude, that is, feeling joy over others misfortunes can come in different forms, is usually deliberate and can be extreme forms of behaviour to cause pain to another person. All the same it is said to be connected to sadism and hostility that I am sure Melanie would have agreed with.

If you know anyone who is being bullied let them know about Schadenfreude. If you are a bully then you are urged to stop bullying people who love you.

Credit: The Art of Making Oneself Loved by One's Wife, c.1825 (colour litho), Hippolyte (fl.1825) / Musee de la Ville de Paris, Musee Carnavalet, Paris, France / Archives Charmet / The Bridgeman Art Library
Courtesy of : Bridgeman Art Library

Schadenfreude



A private feeling that is quite singular

That derives from an act quite particular.

You can form the trigger but it is likely I

That brings about a situation so sly.



In my world I call it joy

In the external world you are the toy

The aim of the game is simply to destroy

That social feeling of humane happiness.



So private a feeling, so hidden the notion

The poison is in behaviour with the exact potion.

Hopping mad for joy, for something that you deserve

For competing with Me and igniting my envy.



The law of biological conflict might be unconscious

But my determination to promote

Survival of the fittest is convincingly conscious.

It’s all ‘economics’: it’s your fault, you have no rights.

(c) Jennifer Hooper 2009-10

Hinshelwood, R.D., 1991. A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought. London. 2nd Ed. : Free Association Books

Boeree C.G. Dr, Personality Theories, 1997 and 2006 Karen Horney [internet]. Available at: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/horney.html [Accessed 15th January 2010]

CREATIVE COUNSELLING BOOKSTORE

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/creativecouns-21