ABSTRACT
Hate ranges from momentary hostility over nothing in the nursery to the destruction of warring peoples and cultures. Hate takes either a good or a bad form, hopeful or despairing, but essentially it is the hunger for love. Down at the nursery level, where Winnicott was operating, he said something of huge importance with regard to the difference between healthy and unhealthy hate. In healthy hate, there is a simple mutual hostility that can be worked through to love, but in unhealthy hate, we make use of righteousness and morality to control others. On the psychiatric wards, mutual hostility between staff and patients is, sometimes, unavoidable, and every now and then a whistle-blower publicises how staff mistreat patients in some demoralised hospital. The psychoanalyst, Tom Main, wrote a paper in which he mentioned the phenomenon whereby doctors' hostility is disguised as treatment. But, in the better hospitals, hostility towards patients can take quite another turn, which is seldom officially reported.
