The Power of Resentment

By Richard Reeve

In his classic text on resentment, Max Scheler brings some interesting words into relationship with what has in recovery circles been defined as “the number one offender.”  Do the words impotence, delusion, blindness, inferiority, and falsification find an association in your definition of resentment?

“The case is different when the bent towards relative valuation is accompanied by impotence. Then the oppressive sense of inferiority which always goes with the common attitude cannot lead to active behavior. Yet the painful tension demands relief. This is afforded by the specific value delusion of ressentiment. To relieve the tension, the common man seeks a feeling of superiority or equality, and he attains his purpose by an illusory devaluation of the other man’s qualities or by a specific “blindness” to these qualities. Be secondly, and herein lies the main achievement of ressentiment – he falsifies the values themselves which could bestow excellence on any possible objects of comparison.” Max Scheler, Ressentiment, pg. 58.

The power of resentment is an undeniable fact for those working in the recovery field.  While the effects of resentment cause havoc in the life of one caught in it’s grip, the good news is that the tools of the recovery program can bring about relief from it’s insidious power.  At the Family Foundation School we teach 5 steps for dealing with resentment (or any negative emotion for that matter).

• Admit it

• Take responsibility for it

• Don’t act out on it (Don’t express it)

• Pray about it

• Ventilate in a healthy way

There are other formulas, many of them in fact.  The key is to do something so that we do not harbor our resentments.  “Healthy-mindedness,” in the sense that William James used the term, can ill afford it.