Ressentiment and the Mechanisms of Defense: Theory![]() ![]() |
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from Friderich Nietzsche, Geneology of Morals,
II 16
“The man who, from
lack of external enemies and
resistances and forcibly confined to the oppressive narrowness and
punctiliousness of custom, impatiently lacerated, persecuted, gnawed
at, assaulted, and maltreated himself; this animal that rubbed itself
raw against the bars of its cage as one tried to
“tame” it;
this deprived creature, racked with homesickness for the wild, who had
to turn himself into an adventure, a torture chamber, an uncertain and
dangerous wilderness—this fool, this yearning and desperate
prisoner became the inventor of the “bad
conscience.”
But thus began the gravest and uncanniest illness, from which humanity
has not yet recovered, man’s suffering of man, of
himself—the result of a forcible sundering from his
animal
past, as it were a leap and plunge into new surroundings and conditions
of existence, a declaration of war against the old instincts upon which
his strength, joy, and terribleness had rested hitherto. . .
.
Let us add at once that, on the other hand, the existence on earth of
an animal soul turned against itself, taking sides against itself, was
something so new, profound, unheard of, enigmatic, contradictory, and
pregnant with a future that thee aspect of the earth was essentially
altered”
“All instincts which do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward—this is what I call the internalization of man: thus it was that man developed what was later called his ‘soul.’ The entire inner world, originally as thin as if it were stretched between two membranes, expanded and extended itself, acquired depth, breadth, and height, in the same measure as outward discharge was inhibited.” |