SCHADENFREUDE: Why do we enjoy seeing others fail?

Schadenfreude, the joy in someone else’s misfortune, is a common human experience. We often feel it when someone we believe deserves it embarrasses themselves or is caught in a scandal. Nietzsche once said, “Humor is just schadenfreude with a clear conscience.” This is true, as many comedic scenes involve some form of hilarious undoing. However, when this pleasure becomes malicious, it can be troubling.

Some rules govern schadenfreude. We feel pleasure when an envied person is shamed because it tarnishes their status, making them seem less superior. We delight in the failure of the opposing team because we feel enhanced by the success of our side. Distributing humiliating information about a public figure across social media delights certain influencers, and those who pass it on feel a secret joy in expanding the denigration. Dehumanization is at the core of this kind of schadenfreude.

Children as young as six display signs of pleasure in seeing peers fail but are pressured to hide their glee. Compensation restores inner balance when we go too far, and we’ll dream of arriving naked for a test to put us back in our place. Contemporary culture encourages schadenfreude when historically unsuccessful groups, carrying painful feelings of inferiority, externalize their anger towards a competing group. When the latter is harmed,  rage can convert to pleasure. It temporarily relieves inner anguish.

However, we should feel sobered by all antisocial qualities and meet them with ethical restraint. Religious texts offer warnings that suggest the unconscious will react to unrestrained schadenfreude.

“Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth…”

(Proverbs 24:17-18, King James Version).

Delight in our enemies’ harm can turn the Self away from its preserving and protective role, leaving the ego vulnerable to collective shadow and unpredictable tumult. The only remedy for schadenfreude is empathy.

When we outgrow our feelings of inferiority, rage, shame, competition, and malice, we may discover a grace that emanates from the Self. A spiritual quality of kindness that grants us the ability to suffer-with. Grounded in understanding, we can find the power to stand side-by-side with the accused, the misfortuned, the scapegoated, the exiled, the abandoned, and the shamed. Offering them comfort and good counsel as they go on to what lies before them.

HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:

 “I am in my childhood bedroom with my boyfriend. He is lying on the bed, and I am standing facing him. I wear lingerie, white fishnet stockings, and a cobalt blue lace bra. I felt good about how I looked, and I felt desired by him. There was sexual energy and anticipation. I said I’d be right back; I needed to go to the bathroom. I exit the bedroom, turn the dark corner, and stumble upon a creepy doll in the darkness. She was hand sewn, looked like a kind of rag doll or like Sally from A Nightmare Before Christmas, and she notably had two embroidered circles on the top right of her head, which were unfinished, the needle and thread still hanging from there. I wasn’t scared of how she looked, but this doll evoked a faint sense of horror in me. Her presence felt jarring, emotionally charged, and possibly ominous. I turned around the corner with it in my hands to show it to my boyfriend.”

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