Psychology Digest: I spit on your grave

First posted at Myspace..bear with the typos
Date: December, 2005

PSYCHOLOGY DIGEST-1

Sometime back I came across a movie named "I spit on your grave", a pretty old movie with unknown actors in the lead. But during the year of its release and long after it still remains quite a "known" movie. The movie became ill-famous for its brutal rape scenes and even gorier revenge scenes. The title of the movie is very interesting though...It makes me wonder "what makes a person hate another fellow so much that he/she would continue hating the fellow long after that fellow is dead and buried ?" In an attempt to answer this subjective question it might do some good if i start with a more basic question "what triggers off hate?

The answer , according to me, would be "huge disappointments/expectations". I feel they are the two faces of the same coin. We say that we hate our enemies...who are our enemies? Enemies are usually people with whom we had some kind of dealings in the past and when dealings didnot work out our way or according to our expectations, we get disappointed and start disliking the person for not acting the way we wanted him/her to act and maybe, finally hate that person. I know it may sound too simple a reason to trigger off a strong emotion like hate but then again atom is such a tiny thing.

Also there are situations like the one shown in that movie, where the heroine had just "one encounter" with her would be enemies before she start hating them. Usually one-encounter-triggers off-hate happens when we are hugely disappointed with the other party for disturbing/demeaning our "peace/life/convictions/values". There could be many more but the thing to foucs on is "disturbance in personal space- leading- to- disappointments". Like, in the movie the heroine is brutally raped by a group of men the very day she lands up in a small idyllic countryside. Now, a rape victim can have N number of reasons to hate her rapists, but we am concerned about only one of these, which infact is the most baisc one...her expectations from fellow beings of a decent behaviour...that they would be, if not nice to her, atleast wont be mean to her either. But the contrary happens which triggers off huge diappointment and finally hate.
I myself have felt such strong emotion as hate, the basis of which have been expectations/disappointment. I hated my ex (then boyfriend) who left me for reasons of his own. Infact I hated him so much, I thought I should vent all my frustrations through a letter to him; can you guess how the letter was addressed? It read "To the fucking asshole formerly known as boyfriend"... that was long time ago and i never send the letter. But I do have a good laugh when I think how silly I was ! Howvere not all hate can be put in the category of silliness.
Sometimes hate can be so strong that one can completely destroy the person he/she hates or end up hurting oneself. This category of hate could bud from mega desappointment which disturbs the very core of being. This mega dsiappointment must have not only hurt "one view/expectation" but should as well have changed/gave birth to another view/expectation/conviction in the person. ..like in medical terms a "malignant change"
Let me explain this point with the help of the movie. After the protagonist was raped , two things happened. First, her "expectations" from fellow being got damaged completely and secondly, due to this damage , she had a "new view" towards men in general. So, in a way we can say her life changed/ her way of looking at life changed and as long as she maintained those new views she would always be reminded of the past that led to her present state of mind and she would continue hating her rapists. I guess, I have answered the question I asked at the beginning of this post. But there's a part of it which is still left untouched ---the revenge/settle the score part. I guess it happens due to the dissonance created by the old view and the new view clash. Even though a new view has formed in the mind but the old view was so strong that it doesnot go away easily. We start analysing as to what went wrong with our old view or why did the person disappoint us. We also can't accept the fact that our old view was wrong. The mind keeps asking why/how all the time that it decides to uproot the very cause that gave rise to such a dissonance i.e destroy the person that you hate or destroy oneself so that the buzzing in the mind stops !