Hostility does not ordinarily exclude love

Both HOSTILITY AND LOVE are bound to exist IN EVERY CLOSE RELATIONSHIP. Hostility does not ordinarily exclude love.

But--

Hostility can become dangerous and choke out love when it is shoved down into the unconscious and is left there indefinitely to spread.

However, it is not safe for hostility to come out willy-nilly. Of this you can be justifiably afraid.

Getting rid of "bad" feelings any old way does not help.

Suppose a boy holds up a bank, taking the clerk as a symbol of his father, just as Jed took the car as a symbol. Obviously bringing out his hostility in this manner can only make his fears and his troubles increase. Besides worse things happening, he accumulates other father symbols to fear and hath-namely, the police.

On the other hand, if a child broods alone in solitary fashion over his hurts either real or imagined, he consciously or unconsciously builds up fantasies of what he would like to do to get even and he frightens himself. Then what usually happens is that he is taken to task by the policeman part of himself which he long ago acquired by being father-inside-himself to himself. He may become painfully severe with himself, driving himself into depressed helplessness for one thing, afraid of venturing anything lest he venture too much. Or he may become an ascetic, punishing himself out of enjoyment, becoming prudish and prissy and over good.

Let us repeat: Getting "bad" feelings out any old way does not help. It does not help to get them out in dangerous pursuits or in solitary imaginings. Neither does it help to have them accepted, say, by some fellow "delinquent" whom one doesn't respect. Nor by a friend, even, of one's own age who one feels is basically no stronger than oneself.

Troubled feelings must be got out to a person from whom the teen-ager can gather strength. This means you or another acceptant adult.

They must be got out in acts that do not get him into trouble.

They must be got out in ways that let him rest in the firm knowledge that he has done no actual harm.

And they must, as you know, be got out in ways that do not shatter self-regard . . .