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A Truth For A Truth On An Eye For An Eye

Everyone loves a good revenge story, so we collected a bunch of them, and spoke to three shrinks and a goofy skater we met on the street, and had them comment on our friends’ revenge stories.

At first this was only supposed to be an innocent little molehill of a piece—everyone loves a good revenge story, so we collected a bunch of them, and then read up on the subject and BAM! stumbled on a mountain of paradoxes the scale of Plato’s mind-body problem. Only by questioning why revenge is frowned upon when it’s so popular, why it’s seen as bad when it feels good, and where you draw the line. We spoke to three shrinks and a goofy skater we met on the street, and had them comment on our friends’ revenge stories.

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A conversation with Tomas Böhm, a Swedish psychoanalyst who wrote the book Revenge or Restoration together with his psychoanalyst wife, Suzanne Kaplan.

Vice: How is revenge viewed from a psychologist’s perspective?

Tomas Böhm:

On the one hand it’s seen as violent and destructive, and on the other, some people believe that, in small doses, it can’t be harmful. I personally believe that revenge always ends badly.

Why?

TB:

It’s like a poker game; you raise the stakes. We say, “getting even” but what we really do is giving someone a taste of his or her own medicine, but at a higher dose. This eventually causes a revenge spiral allowing destructivity to reign freely.

I read a similar theory in a NY Times article by Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert, proving that if someone hits us, we’ll hit them back harder, thinking we get even. So instead of an eye for an eye, it turns into an eye for an eyelash.

TB:

Actually, that Old Testament saying, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is a misreading. It’s not about revenge. It’s about evaluating things based on their actual value. It might as well have said a horse for a horse. But the expression has been used as if it were a biblical defense of revenge.

I guess that’s the New Testament’s way of looking at it, in which God is forgiving instead of vengeful. But let’s put religion aside. How do you explain the fact that revenge feels good?

TB:

When offended, we feel a need to pay back to regain our sense of self-worth. By getting even, we reallocate our feelings of humiliation onto someone else, believing we make them disappear. It’s a projection mechanism.

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Like a natural defense mechanism?

TB:

Like a primitive tendency of believing we can escape humiliation by harming someone back. Which is denial. We consider our actions of revenge to be the consequences of somebody else’s wrongdoing. So we don’t take responsibility for our actions, as we see them as legit. But what we really do is sink to their level. Allowing yourself to cause harm undermines your sense of guilt. The less guilt we feel, the more horrible things we’re capable of doing. To give you an example from a political context; it’s been proven that the first time a government’s military commits torture or persecution, it’s difficult for them. But once they’ve done it, the second and third times are much easier, until it becomes the norm.

Considering Newton’s third law of physics, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, doesn’t revenge qualify as a natural reaction?

TB:

Having revenge fantasies is natural and fine, but the act in itself is not. There’s a good line of argument in George Lucas’ Star Wars films, dealing with the difference between good and evil people, depending on how they use “The Force.” Yoda says it can only be used for defense, never for attack. The dark side of the force— aggression, passion, anger, hate, and jealousy—isn’t stronger, but more seductive. If you give in to it, you get stuck in the patterns of evil.

So you think we should listen to Yoda?

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TB:

Yoda is right, defense is good but harm is not.

Tomas Böhm and his wife’s book

Revenge or Restoration

is out in Swedish and German and will be released in English next year.

A conversation with psychologist Madeleine Gauffin— Sweden’s own Dr Phil, assigned to advise readers of the country’s biggest newspaper on matters of the heart and mind.

Vice: What advice do you give people wanting to get revenge?

Madeleine Gauffin:

 I don’t recommend giving in to those feelings. It’s better to take care of and deal with the anger feeling itself, internally. I mean, you shouldn’t just turn the other cheek, that would be stupid, but there’s an in-between. Like talking instead of harming. I mean, what’s war if not revenge? Also, physical activity tends to make you feel better, or calling a friend to scream your heart out. It also helps to cry.

Well… What if crying is not your thing?

MG:

You can hit a punch bag.

Right. What do you think about people who believe in the justice of “an eye for an eye”? Like vigilantes taking the law into their own hands, as our legal system isn’t always effective.

MG:

There are different personality disorders in which such behavior occurs, believing to have the right to carry out justice according to one’s own inner judicial system.

Like Batman?

MG:

I suppose. But he’s on the good side, which makes you think it’s better. But, sure, he’s definitely taking the law into his own hands, thinking he has the right to kill. If everyone were to do that, it would be chaos.

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That’s actually the main thing I wanted to find out from this conversation. Is revenge really bad for you, as an individual, or just bad for the retaining of order in society?

MG:

You can of course question our society’s morals, but debating it and taking the law into your own hands and committing a crime are miles apart. On a personal level, revenge means you allow yourself to behave badly. We all have a different threshold for how much guilt and remorse we feel, but harming someone is definitely going to come back to haunt you.

Like that witch saying, if you cast a spell on someone it’ll come back to you threefold? Or like karma police?

MG:

You could say that.

Can’t you say that’s what getting revenge is, though? To take on the karma police role?

MG:

No. And I think you’re pushing things too far here. I don’t feel comfortable answering that question.

What about a little harmless revenge then, if it can make you feel better?

MG:

If you don’t harm anyone and you’re happy afterwards, I can’t say it’s bad. It depends on what you’re doing. If it’s just a one-time thing, like in these stories you sent me, some of their actions were good and other were not.

For more on Madeleine Gauffin, visit madeleinegauffin.se

A conversation with psychotherapist Thomas Silfving who has written a bunch of books on revenge.

Vice: Despite most psychologists blacklisting revenge, you end your book, The Many Faces of Revenge, by admitting to having respect for it as an “innate, strong, and sometimes justifiable feeling.”

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Thomas Silfving:

What I mean is that we live in a society where acting out revenge is excluded and frowned upon. If you ask me, revenge is as natural a part of our lives as love or death. So why shouldn’t revenge be allowed to exist? Just like love comprises separation and death comprises ending, revenge comprises restoration.

Would you say you are for it?

TS:

I wouldn’t go that far, but I think symbolic revenge is a field that could be explored further. It’s a form of sublimation—a term coined by Freud to describe creativity as a reflection of the libido. Displacing emotions into creativity or social skills, like humor.

…instead of displacing them on someone else, by getting back at them?

TS:

Exactly.

In your book you also bring up the idea of how not getting revenge can possibly cause mental illness.

TS:

It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? I think it's important to find the courage to ask that because today we're lulled into believing that we can talk about everything. There’s this perception that, “Everything is curable by therapeutic talking.” Maybe that notion in itself is a form of revenge on the fact that we can't accept that life includes aspects and forces beyond language? Depression is a big problem today. Could it be because revenge is more or less taboo, and that not getting it is directly destructive? Also, our judicial system, which is a type of formalized revenge, doesn’t always adequately find punishments appropriate for the proportion of the crime. Still, we’re not allowed to act for our own retribution. We should take revenge seriously because it is, after all, an innate force that has probably been around since the dawn of man.

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Thomas Silfving’s book

The Many Faces of Revenge

is out in Swedish on Mareld

A goofy skater we met on the street.

Vice: Hi there, if a guy punches you in the face for no reason and then leaves, do you want to get back at him?

Gerhard Kregg:

Hell yeah. Otherwise he’d get away with it and might never learn his lesson. It’s like the big kid in grade school who bullies you; you have to fight him for it to stop. Today’s money obsessed society has made it all funny.

What does money have to do with it?

GK:

Paying a fine is not the same as pain. I don’t know, it’s an interesting thing to consider, how people should pay the consequences of their actions. I would even go as far as saying it’s our responsibility not to let people get away with acting like shitheads.

A shrink would tell you punching back is sinking to the offender’s level and also denying your own violent action, by believing it’s legit.

GK:

There’s a difference between provoked and unprovoked violence. If we’re talking about simple logical revenge, like if someone punches you and you punch back, it’s definitely not sinking to their level because you didn’t initiate it. I saw this YouTube clip with a man who was being charged for raping and murdering a woman. The woman’s son, a 130-kilo gangster-looking black guy, was in the courtroom and jumped over the barrier to beat the living hell out of his mom’s murderer. By the shrink’s logic, his action was wrong. But by the son’s measure, being content with the fact that the man who raped and murdered his mother is going to jail for a few years is not enough.

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You can’t really argue with that.

GK:

People and situations are infinitely different, so trying to generalize and moralize over revenge is silly, because there is no solid one way of looking at it. I think shrinks are obsessed with proving theories. Maybe it’s because they’re trying to find logic in something as illogical as the human mind.

DEBBIE, London

I was totally crushed out on this guy I’d gone out with for a while, when he suddenly, out of nowhere, started treating me like shit, dumped me and ignored me. Weirdly, I started seeing a girl after that and was trying to come to terms with it in my head. When the guy found out he emailed my boss, probably in a rage of jealousy, and told her I was a lesbian. Obviously, I was pretty upset about it. My housemate at the time was a London scenester DJ. By coincidence, she was going out with the horrible guy’s best friend. One day, when talking to my housemate, I suddenly heard myself saying all this stuff about how her boyfriend’s buddy used to wake me up really early on Saturday mornings and force me to go to the market and buy lots of different vegetables, and then made me slowly shove them up his ass. It was totally made up and I knew that whatever I told my loudmouth housemate, the whole of London would know. Within a couple of days everyone knew about it (apart from him) and over dinner people would tell him stuff like, “So… do you want to order the carrots with that? Or how about the courgette? I hear they’re pretty good.” It happened about three years ago and, to this day, every hipster in London thinks that guy is, quite literally, the biggest asshole ever.

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VERDICTS

TB:

This is the kind of revenge you like to hear as a story, but in reality it’s very different, just like how a fight in a Western flick is different from a real fight. People are humiliated, broken down, and probably thinking about paying back in an even stronger way, and the destructive spiral continues.

MG:

What she did is not OK. It’s a foul way of scoring points and she could have found other ways to get release for her anger than publicly disgracing him by spreading false rumors.

TS:

This revenge went out of proportion and ended up destroying his life. We have to learn to accept the fact that we do get dumped, it happens. People do stupid things to us. When we get even on impulse, without considering the consequences, we open up the wound more, instead of healing it.

GK:

This is quite possibly the best revenge ever made against someone. It’s harmful but funny and definitely makes up for the shit he gave.

SAMUELE, Rome

My ex-girlfriend, who I was desperately in love with, dumped me after two years because I’m a writer, i.e. I don't have a steady job. She always denigrated my writing skills, so after she kicked me out of the apartment, I decided to write my first novel. It mostly dealt with my anger toward her, describing her psychosis, our sex life (in detail), and her embarrassing secrets and experiences. The real slap in her face, though, was the immediate appreciation from publishers who wanted my novel. I sent her the manuscript along with the publishers’ letters and a note saying, “THEY ACTUALLY SAY I’M NOT A BAD WRITER… Enjoy.” The satisfaction didn't really make up for the pain she caused, but it helped a bit, especially since she’s a public figure in Italy and her reputation is important to her. I’m not too proud of the revenge now that I feel fine again. Her life is now socially disappointing and she doesn't have many friends left. Bummer.

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VERDICTS

TB:

What he did is harmful not only to her, I doubt he’ll feel good about himself when he becomes conscious of what he’s done.

MG:

This guy must have a real grandiose idea of himself to think he can act in this way at her expense. He’s a real sad and insecure bastard and I bet he is full of guilt and remorse now, and guess what? Those feelings last.

TS:

Although this is a form symbolic revenge, when you get even in this way, you need to be careful, acknowledge your own part in what has happened, and not take advantage of someone’s privacy to sell books. Famous people are particularly exposed to this kind of revenge, which can have terrible consequences.

GK:

Oh, moan moan whine whine. It's all about you, Samuele, isn’t it? You probably had a band two years previous to your budding writing career called The Goobers that “almost” got signed and “almost” went on tour and “almost” sold a million CDs, and blame all failures on the record label that told you to get fucked. Any sad asshole can write about sex and sell a few books.

GAVIN, London

My friend Russel, who played in the Reading band Bird, is the kind of loving guy who’d fall for anything. A couple of years ago, he had to move to a new flat and packed all his stuff, literally everything he owned, into his Ford station wagon. Driving past the local pub, an ex-soldier speed head he knew stopped him and begged him to lend him his car for five minutes. He was really persistent, like, “Please, mate, it’s an emergency!” My friend chose to trust him and the guy fucked off with his car and never came back. Over the next few weeks, we sat at the pub discussing what to do about this scumbag and concluded that, as he’s already such a miserable pile of shit, getting back at him wouldn’t do anything. Instead we broke into his house while he was crashed out, cleaned it, changed the carpets, and made it look pristine, like a frikkin’ mansion. The bastard eventually put two and two together and tried to apologize, but we didn’t acknowledge him. To us he was a dead man, and it broke him in a way.

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VERDICTS

TB:

Again, this would have been OK if it was only a revenge fantasy. Actually acting it out was cruel.

MG:

This seems too merciful I must say. Are there really such angels? I wouldn’t call this an ideal revenge because it’s exaggerated in the other way. A sound reaction would be to file a report and learn the lesson not to trust a junkie with his car.

TS:

The bastard should at least have been given the chance to explain himself and eat humble pie. That way this matter could have been taken to court.

GK:

This is definitely a different approach to getting revenge, but giving the man a luxury house after he stole your car is not exactly logical.

JONCHA, Paris

When we were in college, my best friend’s boyfriend left her for some insignificant pretty face, and she became obsessed with the idea of hurting his honor. We decided to throw a trap party at her place, and invited all our friends. She called up her ex and told him she wasn’t angry, and that she’d love it if he came by with his new girlfriend. Everyone showed up and it was a great party. Well, except for the fact that we’d blocked all the toilets, pretending they were broken. To humiliate her ex and his new girlfriend, we put a ton of laxatives in the nice cocktails we served them. They didn’t even feel the taste and thanked us warmly before drinking it all in a few greedy mouthfuls. A couple of minutes later they could no longer focus on the party. It was perfect! Is there anything worse than a diarrhea attack in front of your new lover? Especially when it’s at the ex-girlfriend’s apartment whose toilets were broken. They left the party and I don’t know what happened to them. I don’t feel bad about it at all. I think I’d even find it funny if someone did it to me.

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VERDICTS

TB:

Again, a fun fantasy that shouldn’t have been carried out. Not acting it out would have sent out the message, “I’m not like you, I don’t betray people.”

MG:

If Joncha really thinks it’d be funny if it happened to him, he has sadistic tendencies.

TS:

Vicious camp followers, like Joncha, are dangerous because they piggyback on someone else’s retaliation to make amends for their own pent-up vindictiveness. But it has to be said that his claim to accept the same treatment makes it slightly more OK. Then he gives what he can take.

GK:

I don’t think anything beats humiliating someone than making them shit themselves. Although, he does lose points for not adding Viagra to the guy’s drink. Giving the guy a boner too, while profusely shitting his guts, would freak the girl out even more. Like why would the situation give him a boner?

RACHEL, New York

When I was a freshmen, I roomed with an uptight finance major named Susie, who was raised in the sort of upper class New Jersey suburb where all the girls flaunted their identical Coach bags and Tiffany’s jewelry. Susie spent €1,000 a month buying her 18-year-old boyfriend expensive presents. He went to a lesser college and focused his attention on two things only: weight lifting and watching his girlfriend on the webcam that she installed next to her laptop. She only ever called him “baby.” “What’s his name, again?” I asked one day. “It’s Davaish, but I don’t like that name.” Her poor nameless boyfriend was even programmed into our cordless room phone as “baby.” She also had a habit of leaving her webcam on, all the time, even when she wasn’t in the room, and since the webcam faced both my desk and the bathroom (as well as her bed), he ended up seeing me in various states of stress and undress. This enraged me and I asked her several times to turn off the camera when she wasn’t around, but she never listened. I entertained thoughts of vandalism, food stealing. But, before I even had a chance to snap and destroy her electronics, Susie began turning off her webcam. Not for my benefit, but because she had begun embarking on fraught evening hookups with another guy in our hallway called Jeff. One night, I was the only one there when Jeff knocked. Susie had zipped downstairs, saying she’d be right back, and had already turned off her webcam in preparation for Jeff’s erection. I turned it back on again before answering the door and told him, “Hey, I’m just leaving. Make yourself comfortable on her bed.” I have no idea what happened next. All I know is that my favorite flared jeans ended up with a bunch of bleach marks on them shortly afterwards and Susie decided not to speak to me again.

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VERDICTS

TB:

Acting out this funny fantasy probably had destructive consequences. She could have proved her point by moving out instead.

MG:

If her roommate wanted to break up with her boyfriend, she’s the one to decide what he can find out. Rachel had no right to interfere in her private life.

TS:

This sounds lewd and her action was not relevant or proportionate to the origin of the problem.

GK:

Let’s get this right, she’s offended by some loser webcam boy named baby seeing her naked? He had probably wanked over 50 different girls on his computer that morning, so I don’t think it’s a big deal that he saw her in the nip.

ANNA, Stockholm

A couple of years ago I dated a guy whose GF had just moved to Spain and he’d broken up with her over the phone. I was totally crushed out and he was an asshole, but I couldn’t care less. I spent more and more nights at his place and gradually left a bunch of stuff there. About half a year later, my friend told me she’d seen him with another girl. I tried to call him but he wouldn’t pick up. I was mad as hell and, as I had spare keys, decided to go over to his flat. Surprise, surprise, he was in bed with a girl. I didn’t say a word, just walked around gathering my stuff. She seemed shocked, so I explained that I was his girlfriend and she just stared at me, then said that they’d been going out for years. Obviously, he never broke up with “the girl in Spain.” They were still lying naked under the cover so I figured a nude embarrassment would be appropriate, and pulled the cover off and then left. I also subscribed him to all kinds of annoying sms services. Common friends have told me that, for months, he received texts from the Big Brother house every five minutes and porn mms’ several times a day. Apparently it drove him nuts and he stopped using his phone and eventually changed his number, which made me feel SO good.

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VERDICTS

TB:

Why didn’t she think

before

rather than

after

? She understood early what kind of a person he was, so she could have stopped seeing him instead of putting her head in the lion’s mouth. I don’t believe it made her feel “SO good.” It sounds more like she felt ashamed for not having reacted in time.

MG:

The part when she picked up her stuff and pulled off the cover was confrontational and good. I wouldn’t call it revenge, as it was a completely fair thing to do. Even those subscriptions were pretty harmless compared to what he did, and it’s not like she harmed him.

TS:

What she did is OK and seems to be in proportion to what she’s been exposed to: being deceived and stringed along.

GK:

She should feel good about breaking him and his long-term girlfriend up, not for him getting a few texts from a porn site that he probably already uses and a shit TV show he already watches.

MARILYN, Munich

My ex and I had a business together, and not only did I lose a lot of money, he also cheated on me with a girl who became his girlfriend after six months. One day he came to see me with a brand new BMW, proudly telling me he’d just bought it. I didn’t say anything. I was too full of rage from seeing my money in the shape of his shiny new car. A few weeks passed and one night, when walking home from a party, I saw the BMW parked on the street and completely freaked. I obsessively keyed the car and then went on to kicking the doors and smashing the windows. Unfortunately, I was too pissed to notice the police car that was driving by, and was arrested. I told the policewoman the whole story and she said that she’d probably have done the same thing. Still, the next morning I had to confess to my ex and, believe it or not, it wasn’t his car but his new girlfriend’s car! I should’ve known this con man didn’t even have a dime, so how could he afford such an expensive car? Now his girlfriend has every reason to hate me. I never explained it to her because I don’t give a shit, even though I lost even more money having to pay for the repair. After that I finally closed the chapter on my ex and felt such relief.

VERDICTS

TB:

Even if it was in fact his car, she can’t just go and trash it. She shouldn’t have allowed him to risk her money to start with. Getting revenge for something that she should have prevented in the first place, by drawing a line, cannot make up for what has happened.

MG:

Such aggressive behavior is not particularly elegant and it turned against her straight away.

TS:

This is unfair because it affects a third, innocent, person. She said herself that “I should have known this con man…” If we’re aware of something, we can also reflect on it. The saying goes, “I think, therefore I am.” Not, “I act, therefore I am.”

GK:

Even though it was a bit of a bummer that it was someone else's car, she had every right to do what she did. She wins because she uncovered what a lying little weasel he was.