We have all experienced strong emotions related to conflict.

Our emotions affect the conflicts in our lives and conflict, in turn, influences our emotions.

This chapter begins with two brief examples, one international and one personal, to show the interaction between emotions and conflict.

Hitler was an isolated and alienated loner obsessed by the weakness of Germany during World War I and after. At some point, however, his obsessions began to resonate with the feelings of what was called in Germany “the little people” (die kleinen Leute, or the powerless). He offered a grand narrative of national humiliation and invited “the little people” to join in with the personal grievances they suffered due to the general political and economic misery. “The little people” occupied a distinctly subordinated position in Germany’s social hierarchy prior to Hitler’s rise. They rallied to Hitler’s cause because he provided them with a sense of importance. He was greeted as a savior, as a new kind of leader promising them love and unprecedented significance instead of insignif­icance. Only after World War II did they have to painfully recognize how he had abused their loyalty. As soon as he had enough popular support, Hitler built institutions that forced his manipulation on everybody, evoking noble feelings of loyalty and heroic resistance against humiliation, convincing the German peo­ple that the Aryan race was meant to lead and save the world. Hitler was an expert on feelings. Many Germans put such faith in Hitler that they followed him until 1945, even when it became clear that the situation was doomed. Intense loyalty and highly emotional participation in a collective obsession undercut even the most basic rational and ethical considerations.

Now to a personal example: Envision yourself as a therapist with a client named Eve who came to you because she was depressed.

Eve stubbornly undermines your efforts and thwarts your dedicated and well- intentioned attempts to help her. She argues along these lines: “Beating me is my husband’s way of loving me! I am not a victim. I bring his anger on myself when I fail to respect his authority! He saved me from a cruel father! My father never spoke of love and care—Adam does!” And Adam adamantly refuses to be labeled a “perpetrator,” accusing you of viciously disturbing the peace of his home and claiming that you violate his male honor.

From Adam’s perspective, there is no destructive conflict, no suffering victim, and no violent perpetrator. It is you, the therapist, the human rights defender, an uninvited third party, who introduces conflict. The definition of love and benevolence is crucial here. You define love as the meeting of equal hearts and minds in mutual caring, a definition embedded in the human rights ideal of equal dignity for all. Eve and her husband, on the other hand, connect love with female subservience. You introduce conflict by drawing Eve’s attention to a new definition of love, one that is in total opposition to the couple’s definition.

We can easily link the example of Eve and Adam to events at the interna­tional level. Human rights framings of equal dignity for all do not always meet friendly acceptance among the supposed perpetrators. The South African elites were defensive about Apartheid—they felt entitled to superiority. So-called honor-killings have only recently received attention. This practice has moved from the rather neutral category of cultural practice to the accusatory category of violation of human rights. Or consider the Indian caste system, which has only very recently been labeled Indian Apartheid, a new definition for a way of life that has endured for thousands of years.

In this conundrum, in which emotions and conflict are entangled in painful ways, questions arise such as when and in what ways are emotions (feelings of suffering, pain and rage, or love and caring) part of a conflict that calls for our attention? And when are they not? Who decides? What we can be sure about is that emotions and conflict are not static. They are embedded in larger histori­cal and cultural surroundings. We live in times of transition toward increasing global interdependence and more equal dignity for all. Emotion and conflict and their consequences—how we live them, how we define them—are part of this transition. They, too, change as the world transforms.