A Clean Escutcheon... or The Story of Endless Fighting

"The history of the human race is the story of endless fighting. . . . However the fighting may have started, it has not stopped in all this time!
"The most remarkable part of all this fighting is that no one of us has ever been found who sincerely feels that he is the aggressor! Regardless of the aggression we have just committed, we have always an alibi that proves (to us, at least) that we are blameless. In spite of everything, we are always able to maintain a clean escutcheon. We are like the child who was caught steeling jam. He maintained that it was his hand, not he, that stole it.
"To others, it may we obvious that we are responsible for starting the fight, but we are always aware that there was some extenuating circumstances that 'drove' us to our course of action. Whether the Serpent that started all the fighting in Eden also had his alibi is not known. But with us, it is always the other fellow's fault that we are fighting. All of us choose to believe that we were driven into fighting" (p. 127).

Beecher, Willard. (1948/1949). Oblique Hostility. Individual Psychology Bulletin, 1949, Volume VII, Second Quarter. Originally presented at the Annual Meeting of the Individual Psychology Association of Chicago, June 8, 1948.

"The fighting of worthy competitors is certainly not restricted to the marriage partnership. It exists in business and industry, between groups and nations, and wherever individuals get tangled in competing jealously instead of each tending to his own business and being fruitful according to his own interests and abilities. Such nonproductive, mutual blocking is amazingly similar. One side always blames the other for all the trouble! Each is a master at inventing propaganda to belittle the other, each claims to be the damaged partner; neither sees how he can improve his own behavior unless the other is eliminated from the picture as a power. It is always the other one who has to be taught a lesson! And, as we've said, it makes little difference whether we are listening to children squabbling or to marriage partners or to international debates in the United Nations between world powers--jealous competition always sounds the same! (p. 128).

Beecher, Marguerite & Willard. (1971). The Mark of Cain: An Anatomy of Jealousy. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

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Re:A Clean Escutcheon... or The Story of Endless Fighting, by Lindsay Smith, 09/28/01

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