When the Other Appears: Hatred, Vulnerability, and the Possibility of Empathic Awakening

This paper approaches hatred not as a primary destructive drive or spontaneous aggression, but as an affective response to vulnerability, narcissistic injury, and failures of recognition. Drawing on self psychology, the ethical turn in psychoanalysis, and interdisciplinary contributions from philosophy and literature, hatred is conceptualized as emerging from threats to self-cohesion and when the Other is reduced from subject to object. A close reading of Stefan Zweig’s Amok and a contemporary clinical vignette provide support for this understanding. The concept of “empathic awakening” is introduced to describe a transformative psychic event in which the Other reappears as a fellow human being whose vulnerability calls for recognition rather than eradication. Confirmation of this concept is found in Kohut’s later writings and Camus’s distinction between rebellion and revolution.