“I Shall Not Hate”—On the Transformation of Hate in the Human Mind

Abstract

While the emotion of hatred is one of the most forceful and difficult emotions in intra-personal and inter-personal suffering in general, this article deals with the possibility of dissolving the emotion of hate, as a last resort of the injured person, through psychoanalytic enhancement and cultivating the spiritual dimension of the human mind in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in particular. Inspired by the book, I Shall Not Hate, and based on the concept of “transformation” in psychoanalytic self psychology as it appears in Kohut’s seminal article “On leadership,” in Raanan Kulka’s work, as well as in Buddhist thought, the article tracks the conditions for the development of the transformational unified mind as a mind of prayer, compassionate and lacking hatred, in human beings in general, and in the psychoanalytical space in particular. A clinical example from the psychoanalytical space will illustrate the way in which the transformational mind occurs as a state of mind lacking hatred.