I first came to appreciate the special value of Karen Horney's work while doing research for a study of revenge as a literary theme. Through an exploration of writings on power and punishment I progressed a certain distance with a general theory of revenge. I came to see that the main feelings underlying revengeful acts were shame, violation, and the sense of injustice. I concluded that revenge had three main aims, often intermixed, but each with its own strategies, satisfactions, and dangers.

First, revenge aims to restore personal integrity and self-esteem. The person who must accept injury or insult over a prolonged period without being able to retaliate may come to feel severe self-contempt, a loss of bearings, and crippling fearfulness; his intellectual and moral perceptions may become warped if he rationalizes the injustice perpetrated against him or overvalues his injurer. Such was often the case in German concentration camps, Bruno Bettelheim [in Surviving, and Other Essays, 1979] has reported; similar observations have been made about hostages and other victims of violent crimes. One aim of retaliation, then, is to stave off such reactions by proving one's strength to oneself; through striking back, we hope to restore the integrity—the sense of wholeness and unity—that may have been damaged through our injury.

However, a danger of revenge is that it may, in itself, cause a warping of integrity which may be more damaging than the original injury. The revenger may neglect his own legitimate interests to pursue revenge; he may feel himself to be—and may actually become—no better than his injurer.

The second aim of revenge is to change the perceptions and attitudes of the injurer. By committing deliberate harm, the aggressor has demonstrated contempt for his victim, a feeling that the victim is weak, inferior, or deserving of injury. The revenger acts to change that perception, both in the aggressor and in others. He aims to gain respect and to deter further injury. The dangers of revenge on this level include the possibility of counter-revenge or a loss of reputation if the revenge is perceived as excessive.

The third aim of revenge is to satisfy the desire for justice—or, to put it more accurately, to appease the pain of injustice. Legal philosophers like John Rawls [in A Theory of Justice, 1971] and Edmond Cahn [The Sense of Injustice, 1975] have argued that the desire for fairness and the tendency to fight injustice may be instinctual in the human species; and that they underlie the desire to "even the score" or "pay someone back," as we say, by acts of punishment. The desire for justice may motivate noble and heroic actions; dedicated individuals may work to change society for the better in the name of justice. We also know, however, that the cry for justice may be used to excuse despicable tyrannies and acts of great cruelty, as the restraints of sympathy, mercy, are overwhelmed and the conscience is enlisted in the service of revenge, to endorse the return of injury.

This analysis served me well enough in some respects. It gave me tools for the analysis of public attitudes on capital punishment; it helped disentangle the issues in the Iranian hostage crisis and gave me clues to the strategies of both sides; it helped me understand feuds, duels, and other forms of unregulated retaliation.

The trouble was that it didn't help me very much in thinking about the literary characters I wanted to discuss—Medea, Elektra, and Orestes; Richard III, Shylock, Hamlet, Iago, and Othello; Milton's Satan; Bronte's Heathcliff; Dr. Frankenstein and his creature; Von Kleist's Michael Kohlhass; Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo; numerous characters in the works of Dickens, Kipling, James, Faulkner, Nabokov, and others. It didn't help me confront either the psychological undercurrents revealed by the creators of these characters or the ways they work on our imaginations as readers. It wasn't that my categories were invalid; they just didn't tell me enough that was interesting about these figures.

It was at this point that I encountered Karen Horney's essay "The Value of Vindictiveness," which first appeared in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis in 1949, rightly regarded as a classic by those who know it. This essay helped me distinguish between free acts of retaliation and acts of neurotic vindictiveness; it revealed, as well, the hidden strategies and the sources of vindictive behavior.

In her essay, Homey refers to a "rational anger, proportional to the provocation, that flares up and subsides with its expression"—an anger that might have been suppressed but which the individual chose freely to express; and she notes how vastly different is the quality of vindictiveness, a desire for retaliation which goes beyond what is appropriate. Homey contrasts the person displaying "rational anger" with the person in whom the "expression of … vindictiveness … pervades his whole personality." She adds, "In neuroses, vindictiveness can become a character trait; it can amount to vindictive attitude toward life; it can become a way of life."

She defines vindictiveness as a desire to subject others to "pain or indignity" with the aim of humiliating, frustrating, and exploiting them. She notes that vindictiveness can be expressed directly, through actions taken against individuals; it also can be expressed indirectly, through suffering which accuses others and makes them feel guilty; and it can also be expressed through detachment, by ignoring the needs and feelings of others.

This analysis came as a crucial and clarifying revelation. By isolating the quality of vindictiveness as it cropped up in various personality structures, it revealed hidden patterns among seemingly different types. It showed, for example, the speciousness of forgiveness granted in a vindictive spirit. I understood the strategy of the Apostle Paul when he wrote, "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves.… If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." I also understood the point of Oscar Wilde's advice: "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them quite so much."

Whichever strategy he chooses, the vindictive individual is marked by the fact that his behavior is compulsive—that is, he acts in a manner that is rigid and mechanical, an expression of his neurotic structure rather than his spontaneous wishes or even his best interests. Horney notes that "often there is no more holding back a person driven toward revenge than an alcoholic determined to go on a binge. Any reasoning meets with cold disdain. Logic no longer prevails. Whether the situation is appropriate does not matter.… Consequences for himself and others are brushed aside." The drive can become "the governing passion of a life-time," as individuals search for the "one goal of vindictive triumph … [which becomes] the flame sustaining their lives." Frustration of revenge can cause deep physical and psychological distress. Homey mentions Hamlet, Moby Dick, and Wuthering Heights as literary works presenting valid portraits of vindictiveness.

Horney traces three main sources of hostile retaliatory impulses. The first is hurt pride—a neurotic pride "not built upon existing assets but upon an imaginary superiority." Such pride is, of course, easily offended, and every "slight" becomes fuel for increased vindictiveness. The second source is the externalization of self-hate, through which self-destructive impulses are perceived as coming from outside, causing the individual to think himself despised and unfairly treated by others. The third main source is Lebensneid—an envy of life based on the feeling that one is excluded from the joys felt by others. Ironically, the individual by his very actions and neurotic entanglements may cause the exclusion he feels.

As Horney points out, tendencies toward vindictiveness are strengthened by the fact that it seems to serve several useful functions. Some of these are defensive: because he has a grudge, the neurotic can make demands on the world—present a bill, as it were. Vindictiveness also protects him from external hostility (imagined or actual) and from unrecognized self-hate. It also helps restore injured pride.

And in addition to its defensive functions, vindictiveness also holds forth the tempting promise of triumph. Some forms are relatively benign—Horney cites the Cinderella story as one—but others are more destructive. The individual, perhaps because he has suffered from a history of humiliation, may develop a longing to reverse roles, to be the one with the power to exploit, frustrate, and inflict pain. The vindictive person may feel a great thrill from such actions: indeed, Horney says, "it often constitutes one of the rare alive feelings he is capable of having." As an example from literature, she cites the excitement Hedda Gabler feels in destroying the irreplaceable manuscript of Eilert Lovborg.

Unfortunately for the vindictive individual, the process is self-defeating. The search for triumph involves him in a vicious circle, as he searches for sharper stimuli to arouse him; furthermore, he is unable to value life's experiences for their own sakes: love, family, and work becomes merely means to achieve the true goal to which his life is dedicated—the goal of vindictive triumph.

Clearly, vindictiveness is not the solution to the individual's problem: in fact, it is the problem. It renders the individual "isolated [and] egocentric [; it] absorbs his energies, makes him psychically sterile, and, above all, closes the gate to his further growth." Horney concludes, "When we realize how deeply he is caught within the machinery of his pride system, when we realize the effort he must make not be crushed by self-hate, we see him as a harassed human being struggling for survival."

Is vindictiveness "curable"? Horney says the condition is difficult to treat because superficially it offers too much—defense, the thrill of triumph, self-respect, and a sense of identity. Horney reports that patients will often wish to defeat their analysts more than they desire to be cured. When a vindictive person does seek treatment, it is often in a search for ways to overcome his inhibitions and become more effectively vindictive.

The individual who wishes to rid himself of this trait must work at the whole range of personal relations and take the risk of "becoming more human," Horney writes. Recovery would necessitate his "giving up his isolated grandeur, his uniqueness, and becoming an ordinary human being like everyone else without any special privileges; becoming part of the swarming mass of humanity he so despises." He will have to learn sympathy, "not in the grand style of providence for others, but, to start with, just for his own life." In short, life itself must become more important than vindictive triumph.

Later, when I came to study Neurosis and Human Growth, I understood how vindictiveness fit into her larger system. The original article remains, however, a key work for me.

Reviewing other psychological literature, I found material of interest in the work of Fritz Heider, Gregory Rochlin, and Anthony Storr. A 1966 article by Charles Socarides usefully described vengefulness in a Freudian context ["On Vengeance: The Desire to 'Get Even,'" The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 14, 1966]. Heinz Kohut has written informatively about rage and revenge, and I have found interesting links between his views on "grandiosity" and Horney's concept of self-idealization. And a fine and sensitive article by Marvin Daniels ["Pathological Vindictiveness and the Vindictive Character," Psycho-Analytic Review, Vol. 56, 1969] explored the psychodynamics of revenge, offered a theory of the origins of vindictiveness, and suggested ways of approaching literary portrayals of vindictiveness.

Daniels suggests that the vindictive individual acts on the implicit assumption that "a principle of 'just deserts' operates inexorably in the universe. According to this principle, everything must be requited—not only injury for injury, but favor for favor." He traces the assumptions of vindictive persons back to childhood experiences with parents who related to them without intimacy, who treated them like mechanical objects in a universe of strict rewards and punishments. As a result, the child came to perceive himself as mechanical, as "a living fortress who walks around." For this reason, Daniels says, "the vindictive character comes to limit, as much as he is able, all intercourse with the rest of the world. He remains watchfully on guard. Little goes in and little goes out,"

Daniels sees vindictiveness originating in the individual's "shattering" disappointment at the hands of a parent figure. And, like Horney, he points out that the vindictive person is doomed to fail in his search for contentment because he is unaware of the true cause of his misery—"of his agonizing yearning for reunion with the loved one he lost in the dark, forgotten past. Thus, any 'vindictive triumph' which comes to him is rarely an occasion for great rejoicing, and his pleasure is usually short-lived."

Daniels describes vindictiveness as an effort to "enter into a relationship with the envied person and make him miserable too." He cites the example of Milton's Satan, who plots the downfall of Adam and Eve in order to lessen his own loneliness. Daniels concludes, like Horney, that "despite his hollow vindictive victories, life's real values continue to elude" the vindictive person.

The acute insights provided by these works have given me the tools for analysis of the characters I have sought to study and, perhaps more significantly, for the understanding of the general phenomenon of revenge. Like the instinct for self-defense, through which the individual is preserved, and the sexual instinct, through which the species is perpetuated, the desire for revenge has a deep hold on us and serves an important role in our lives. I have come to see both the constructive and destructive aspects of that desire; I have come to understand better the tangled aims and goals of revenge. A force so powerful cannot be ignored, nor should we expect to suppress or discard it from our lives easily. We must see it for what it is and understand what we expect it to do for us before we can find constructive ways to cope with it.

In achieving this understanding, Horney gives us much; but I also believe that the portraits of revengefulness and vindictiveness we find in literature—whether "great" or popular—reveals a congruence of insights which presents the hopeful possibility that our combined resources, we as literary analysts and you as psychoanalysts, will be most productive in developing and communicating an understanding of this complex phenomenon.