Friends and Enemies: Our Need to Love and Hate. Dorothy Rowe

the slightest effect …

      Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentery which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated …

      It was shortly after the British Red Cross Society teams arrived, though it may have had no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick also arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick. Women lay in beds with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet lips, you saw them wandering around with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick.

      Do you see what I mean? At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick gave them back their humanity.

      Perhaps it was the most pathetic thing that happened in Belsen, perhaps the most pathetic thing that’s ever happened, I don’t know. But that’s why the sight of a piece of lipstick today makes my eyes feel just a little uncomfortable.³¹

      And how hugely important is that uncomfortable feeling in our eyes, the tears of sorrow and pity that come when we recognize the humanness of another person, a fellow human being. We recognize them and their story, and we see them in us and us in them. We can guess at what they are feeling and why they did what they did. There is something both pathetic and brave in what these women did. Wearing lipstick was not going to make one iota of difference to the physical condition of these women, but it was a way of defending themselves against the assaults they had suffered on the sense they had of being a person.

      Lieutenant-Colonel Gonin knew that the women who wore the lipstick were making a statement about their identity and their pride. He knew that he did the same, not by wearing lipstick but by wearing his army uniform, and that using lipstick, a uniform or whatever to express identity is characteristic of our species Homo sapiens sapiens or Modern Humans. Our distant ancestors, the Early Humans, had no beads, pendants or necklaces, no painting on cave walls. In his study of the development of the mind the archaeologist Steven Mithen wrote, ‘A characteristic feature of all Modern Humans, whether they are prehistoric hunter gatherers or twentieth century business people is that they use material culture to transmit social information’³² – that is, to define their identity and to demonstrate to others their definition of their identity.

      Babies are not born wearing some identity statement – their mothers press that upon them soon enough – but they are born with the need to be a person and to be treated as a person. Most adults recognize this though they might not articulate it as such. They know that a regular pattern to the day benefits the baby and that a baby needs company. The regular pattern reinforces the baby’s meaning structure and the company of other people confirms the baby as a person. If the baby is deprived of company or if the regular pattern of care is badly disrupted the baby becomes distressed. It seems that at birth, when the baby encounters an environment not as supportive and predictable as the womb, the baby is primed to survive both as a body and as a person. Just as a baby whose mouth and nose become covered will scream and wriggle in order to breathe, so a baby who finds his meaning structure under threat will demand the conditions necessary for its survival.

      The purpose of life is to live, and just as everything that is alive will strive to survive physically, so every meaning structure strives to maintain its coherence and thus survive. The mechanism for doing so is given by the form of thought which I have called primitive pride.

      I first became aware of this way of thinking when, in the early seventies, I was spending much of my working day in conversation with people who were severely depressed. To become depressed you have to turn against yourself and hate yourself. My patients were experts in hating themselves. In utter humility and pain they would describe to me how they had failed in everything, how they were responsible not only for every disaster they had suffered but for every disaster that had befallen their family and friends. Some claimed responsibility for world poverty and the degradation of the planet. If I tried to suggest that they were claiming responsibility for matters clearly not in their control they would correct me by telling me that they must be responsible for all these disasters because, if they had been really good people, these disasters would not have happened. They were inherently inadequate, unacceptable, bad, the wickedest people the world had ever seen. At every encounter they would thank me for listening to them and say, ‘You shouldn’t waste your time with me. There are many more deserving patients than me.’

      In the face of such a massive, relentless attack, how does a meaning structure manage to remain whole? I found that, as I listened to these people, in the welter of self-castigation and humility something else would occasionally show through. It might just be a facial expression, a tone of voice, or a remark made in casual conversation while we were preparing a cup of tea or standing in the queue at the canteen.

      What showed through was pride. I was first aware of this pride as I listened to some of my patients talking about their suffering. I was very familiar with this way of talking. It is the voice of the expert sufferer. Expert sufferers take pride in their ability to suffer. My mother was an expert sufferer. The suffering of anyone else paled into insignificance when compared with her suffering, and in the family she brooked no competition. Thus I never acquired the knack of talking about my own suffering. I find it very difficult to say, ‘I’m ill,’ or ‘I’m anxious.’ When I’m on my deathbed and you ask me how I am I shall say, ‘Fine.’ This, I am sure, was one of the reasons my husband found me so attractive. He was an expert sufferer and needed a silent and attentive listener.

      Expert sufferers can specialize not just in physical suffering but the mental suffering that goes with guilt. If you say to such an expert sufferer that something has gone wrong and perhaps they could put it right you will find that they do not make a move to do so. Instead they fall to suffering, saying, ‘It’s all my fault, I’m so guilty, I’m sorry I’ve done this to you, how can I ever make it up to you, you don’t know just how guilty I feel,’ and so on and so on. Their aim is to make you feel guilty for having made them feel guilty. Not that your suffering guilt can ever match the agony they suffer. Expert sufferers take great pride in their capacity to suffer and they resist anyone who tries to take their suffering away from them. Martyrdom can be a wonderful source of pride.

      Most of my depressed patients revealed a pride in how bad they were. They were not ordinarily bad. They did not want to be ordinary. If they could not be the Most Perfect, Wonderful, Intelligent, Beautiful, Successful, Admired and Loved Person the World Has Ever Seen they had to be the Worst, Most Despised, Confused, Evil Failure and Outcast the World Has Ever Seen.

      Over the weeks and months that we talked the life story of each of my patients gradually unfolded, and primitive pride was revealed in the codicils that came with their statements about who they were and what the ending of their story would be. Each life story was unique, but they had some common themes such as:

      • ‘I am a shameful person and must creep around the edges of society, asking permission to exist and expecting a refusal.’ Primitive pride then adds, ‘God sees my suffering and will one day comfort and reward me.’

      • ‘I am wicked, the cause of my disaster, and depression is my deserved punishment.’ Primitive pride then adds, ‘But I’m a better person than everyone else because I know how wicked I am whereas other people don’t recognize how wicked they are. Through my suffering I shall find redemption.’

      • ‘I shall expunge my shame and guilt by dying.’ Primitive pride then adds, ‘I will force those who shamed me to witness my suffering and know that it is their