What do you think of human cruelty?

Lots of people just have not developed the ability to account for their actions. By this I mean they do not have the psychological capability to consider or think through the effect that their actions will have on another person or to put themselves in the sneakers of other people. This explains why cruelty is more ordinary among more youthful kids. The have not yet developed the ability to know the ramifications of their actions on other people. On the other hand, this is something that may be taught to them by their mother and father.

A long time ago, when a close companion of mine determined to come out to her very religious, politically conservative parents, she believed that the chances were good that they might refuse her selection and probably refuse to ever talk to her again. Still, she felt that she could not go on living a lie and wanted them to know the facts on her. She had a wonderful companion whose love and support would help her get through this hard time. We had long talks on how she ought to come close to her parents. We were youthful and deeply troubled about the concept that her parents, who had always been severe but loving, could refuse their own son over something that appeared so essential a part of who she was. But we both knew that it was possible.

Since that time I've had plenty of opportunity to observe and struggle with questions about why people can be so unkind to other people, even those they supposedly love. The distressing incident in which a Rutgers University student streamed to the web images of his roommate involved in physically intimate relations with another man reminded me once again of the unthinking nature - and the tremendous and dangerous power of prejudice. (I want to be clear that none of us knows that prejudice was behind this act. We all need to be very careful about jumping to conclusions based on the limited and simplified data that news reports tend to offer us.)

Yet, whatever the reasons behind it, the result was that one human being used the internet to inflict emotional pain on another.

Since reading about this episode I have been trying once again to find a way to explain this kind of behavior. Is it the kind of narcissistic lack of empathy that has recently been discussed on the PT website? Since I believe narcissism is a normal (and in some ways healthy) aspect of human nature and empathy is something that develops over time, I am unfortunately leaning towards a more painful conclusion. I think there is something more sinister at work here.

I have been going through some of my books on psychodynamics to try to put together a psychological explanation; but I still don't have it figured out and would like to hear what you think.

Here's what I've cobbled together so far:

Freud believed that sadism, or the desire to cause pain to another human being, is the result of a mix of sexual desire and aggression, which have biological and psychological bases and are a natural part of human nature. He believed that parents' job in life is to "civilize" their "little heathens," that is, to teach their children to control these natural impulses in order to live in the world with other human beings. He therefore thought that we all have the possibility of acting on these impulses. It's just that some of us have them under better control than other people.

Heinz Kohut was a Freudian psychoanalyst who left the fold in the 1970's. He developed a theory called "Self Psychology," in which he argued that aggression against another person is always psychologically motivated. By this he meant that anger, rage and hate always have emotional and psychological meaning, even though it is not always obvious or easily explained. Sometimes rageful or sadistic behavior results from what he called "fragmentation," which happens when a person feels that he or she is coming unglued. This is often the result, according to Kohut, of a feeling that you are not being understood or accepted by someone who is important to you. Without understanding and acceptance, Kohut believed, we lose ourselves. Rage or hatred directed at another person can be a way of holding ourselves together.

The British psychoanalyst and author Christopher Bollas says that beneath hatred and hateful behavior lies a profound emptiness. For him rage, anger, and hatred are ways of filling the emptiness. It is, he suggests, better to feel sadistic than not to feel at all.

Ruth Stein, a New York City psychoanalyst, has written beautifully about terrorists who destroy other people in the name of their god. She feels that they often idealize a supreme being in order to undo their own profound self-hatred. This may also be true in the case of hurt carried out on the basis of religious morality. My friend who worried about coming out to her parents suspected that they did not like themselves very much. The only way they could be convinced that they were good people was to follow a very narrow path of right and wrong. But paradoxically, by rejecting their own daughter for something that harmed no one, they were, it seemed to us, confirming that they were in fact neither nice nor moral.

There is a conclusion on kids who were hurt, either physically or emotionally, either by their parents or by others in their life, who then become adults who are cruel to other people. But there are also lots of kids who suffered extremely at the hands of other people, yet who become humorous and friendly and kind adults. It seems like the people haven't figured it out.

There are lots of underlying factors in cruelty and that most if not all cruelty is done intentionally and has a center of issues that spawn out in irrational and sometimes violent acts. Lots of people do it as a way to express the feelings, thoughts, and dislike that builds up within them, a few do it as being a type of revenge as some crime they trust was committed against them or somebody they know or love, many people do it just to feel and to right the incorrect that they believe exists in the world. It's practically impossible to find one general reason, but there are without a doubt several that exist from within the person who acts cruelty.

Copyright by Lucy, a beautiful girl who likes swimming, shopping online and has a shop with coach purses and oakley m frames.