Contents
There is a long love story between us. In our feeling for them there is admiration, projections, fears, tenderness. Consider with passion what is unusual about our relationship with pets.
I love him like my doppelgänger
We get to know them from the cradle: from the very first days, the baby is surrounded by toy animals. This is accepted, and we do not really think about why we buy teddy bears, hares or dogs. Perhaps, unconsciously, we act as fairies from the fairy tale about the Sleeping Beauty – we endow the newborn with wonderful character traits, the symbols of which are certain animals. Or maybe our actions are an echo of the beliefs of distant ancestors who hoped that amulets would protect the child from evil spirits … But soft toys play a different role in the mental life of babies.
“At an early age, children constantly need the presence of their mother and, when she is not around, they can cuddle or suck on a soft toy (however, just like a corner of a blanket), says psychoanalytic psychotherapist Elena Ratner. – A soft toy becomes a so-called “transitional object”, in a sense, it replaces the mother, helps to cope with temporary separation, reduces anxiety. Tactile sensations of something warm, fluffy, soft, which brought comfort in childhood, are stored in our memory. Perhaps that is why we, already adults, are so pleased to hug and stroke a dog or cat.
Young children perceive pets as a reflection of themselves: their silence, vulnerability and dependence are familiar to them. “The child does not feel the difference between himself and the animal,” said the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. “Only an adult person becomes so alien to an animal that he offends another by calling him the name of an animal.”* What remains in us from childhood, when animals were the object of our early affection? “Sympathy for their fate,” answers animal psychologist Eric Bonfoy, “the tendency to empathize with them and calm down next to them.”
I love them because they love me
We easily attribute human feelings, character traits and behavioral motives to animals (this phenomenon is called “anthropomorphism”). For a dog – loyalty and devotion, for a cat – affection and sensitivity. Even a parrot “kisses us gently” with its beak.
“He loves me!” This is what pet owners are convinced of. After all, how happy my dog is, how she jumps and squeals with delight when I come home – well, of course, she missed me. And how subtly my cat understands me: when my injured knee aches, she comes and “cures” the pain.
And most importantly (it seems to us) – they love us for who we are, they don’t care if we are successful, happy, beautiful.
“Behind this fantasy, there may be a longing for the lost paradise of unconditional maternal love,” comments Elena Ratner. – A child in early childhood is loved by the mother simply for what he is. As we get older, we get less and less of that kind of love from other people. The memory of her, the need to relive this strong feeling provokes many of us to unwittingly “humanize” animals, to project onto them our desire to be loved without any conditions.
Eric Bonfoy adds: “Anthropomorphic tendencies are more likely to be shown by those who are experiencing relationship difficulties or financial problems. A pet helps to forget about these difficulties, because it instantly responds to the owner’s need for affection and love.”
We are guilty before them
“The main feelings that modern man has for animals are guilt and compassion,” says writer and philosopher Tristan Garcia*. “Animals have ceased to be sublimely mysterious to us, as in the era of romanticism, and are no longer our co-workers, as in the rural culture that urbanization has destroyed. Now “animals become the object of projection for our remorse.”
We are especially sensitive to their suffering in those moments when … some people treat other people like cattle. Paradoxically, today’s animal rights movement grew out of the Holocaust.
There is an obvious connection between the industrial slaughter of livestock and how the mass extermination of people was organized, so initially among the animal rights activists in the US and Europe there were many those who survived the Holocaust and their children.
In order to free ourselves from guilt, from the point of view of the philosopher, it is important for us not so much to protect the legal rights of animals as to develop forms of common life, cooperation with them, to restore tangible everyday connections with different living beings. This means strengthening our best qualities as people and at the same time recognizing the animal part hidden in each of us.
* T. Garcia “We, animals and humans. News of Jeremy Bentham” (Fr. Bourin, 2011).
I love myself first
We are all different and we choose different pets. “Our attitude towards animals often depends on their appearance, attractiveness, the presence of wool (pleasant) or slime (unpleasant),” writes animal psychologist Hal Herzog **. Animals-babies cause special tenderness.
Natural attachment to all who resemble a baby – to kittens, puppies, ducklings – ethologists call the “protective reaction.” Animal babies are similar to small children – they are big-headed, with large heads, big-eyed, cheeky and clumsy. These traits, according to ethologist Konrad Lorenz, act as triggers, instantly awakening parental feelings in us.
Someone likes small, someone large, someone purebred, someone mongrels. And someone is ready to shell out hefty sums for a long pedigree, anticipating how spectacular it will look with a “fashionable” (this season) or expensive dog or showing off at an exhibition with their medalist pet. In this case, a living being becomes a material value along with branded clothing, an expensive foreign car and a country cottage. Or, on the contrary, the only status thing that compensates for the absence of other symbols of success.
“The animal seems to confirm the prosperity achieved by the owner,” explains Elena Ratner. – To others, this person may seem overly narcissistic. But in fact, in the depths of his soul, a child is hiding, confident in his own imperfection and the injustice of his life lot. He is forced to assert himself at the expense of the attention of others – the only way he can (for a while) believe that he is really worth something.
I love him more than people
“The more I get to know people, the more I love dogs” – this famous phrase can be found in blogs, forums and social networks.
“Those who had traumatic episodes in their relationship with their parents or siblings in childhood think so,” says Elena Ratner. – As adults, they are not able to trust others, it is difficult for them to accept the duality, inconsistency of relations with others. And there is a fantasy that you can establish a safer (unambiguous) relationship with pets. After all, they will not betray, they will not offend, they will not cause mental pain.
Sometimes, hypersensitivity hides the suppression of sadistic impulses, adds psychoanalyst Jean-Pierre Winter. He cites the case of his patient: “In elementary school, he said he wanted to be a butcher and was mocked by the whole class. A few years later, when asked about his profession, he began to answer that he would be a veterinarian. His destructive impulse was censured by other people (and his “Superego”) and transformed into concern for those who were previously the object of aggression.
After all, as Michel Montaigne remarked, “it is only out of empty and stubborn vanity that we prefer ourselves to all other animals” ***. Moreover, we do not need to choose between love for people and love for animals, because through love for animals a person saves his own humanity.
I love him because I understand his feelings
The issue of animal rights was first raised at the end of the XNUMXth century by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham in his book Deontology, or the Science of Morals. Discussing the difference in attitudes towards people and animals, he wrote: “What could become a demarcation line? The ability to think or maybe speak? The question is not whether they can reason, whether they can speak. But: are they capable of suffering? Subsequent discoveries of geneticists, biologists and ethologists have shown how close these living beings are to us. “Many of them are able to think elementarily,” says ethologist Boris Tsiryulnik, “mammals and crows, for example, have an idea of death and are able to suffer from loss.”
The line between humans and (other) animals is becoming increasingly blurred, if not disappearing altogether. And the spread of ecological consciousness sharpens our understanding of the common fate of all living beings on Earth.
* Z. Freud “Basic psychological theories in psychoanalysis” (Aletheia, 1998).
** H. Herzog “Joy, Muck and Dinner” (Career Press, 2011).
*** M. Montaigne “Experiments” (Science, 1981).