The dread of sameness: social hatred and Freud’s “narcissism of minor differences”

One normally thinks that we stick together with others like us, and that we exclude others whose difference provokes antipathy towards them. I will argue that antipathy is more rooted in sameness than in difference. Consciously, we exclude others who are different, but unconsciously, we hate sameness, and avoid it by creating delusional differences. Hatred drives the projection of these delusional differences into the other that it creates, there to be exterminated. Overt differences, to which the delusional differences can be attached, mask the delusional projection and the source of hatred in sameness. In what Freud called “the narcissism of minor differences”, neighbours harboured the most persistent grievances against each other. “[P]recisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well ... are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other ...” (1930a, p. 114). He went on to say that