The human psyche can sometimes construct astonishing
shapes and layers. We are accustomed to judging emotions by their outward
expression. If someone is angry, we see anger. If someone is envious, we see
envy. If someone hates, we see hatred. And rarely do we ask ourselves: what
lies one layer deeper? One emotion can conceal another, while a habitual
reaction that a person has long considered part of their character may turn out
to be only the outermost shell. Almost like a matryoshka doll.
Let us imagine these layers allegorically – perhaps you
will easily recognize real people in them. Hatred is a hyena. It is aggressive,
something we instinctively recoil from. Yet it recoils from people as well.
Hatred does not only attack – it is afraid. Hostility often conceals a sense of
threat: “I will reject you before you have a chance to reject me.” Think, for
example, of the characters in the film Scarecrow (directed by Rolan Bykov,
1983), where beneath adolescent cruelty we find fear, loneliness, a need for
acceptance, and a painful urge to assert oneself at someone else’s expense.
Resentment is a scorpion, its stinger poised to strike,
protected by a hard, impenetrable shell. Resentment can survive for years, as
though making a wager with time itself. Think of Karandyshev in A Cruel Romance
(directed by Eldar Ryazanov, 1984). Years of accumulated resentment and
humiliation gradually harden into the armor of wounded pride.
And then there is envy – a snake. Someone else’s
happiness becomes a painful reminder of what we ourselves lack, and behind the
question “Why does he have it?” emerges an almost childlike cry: “What about
me? Where is mine?” Envy traps a person within the tightening coils of its own
prison. This is Salieri in Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri: another person’s gift
becomes not a source of admiration, but a tormenting reminder of what he feels
he himself was denied.
But what if all three monsters take up residence within
the same person? Then one emotion may give rise to another, forming a sinister
psychological matryoshka. On the outside – hatred. Beneath it – deep
resentment, and deeper still – tormenting envy. And if we loosen the final
coils of the snake, what we may discover inside is not another monster, but a
frightened child. A child who was once deprived of love, rejected, or denied a
sense of safety and came to believe that the world is dangerous, that trust
leads to pain, that it is unsafe to be vulnerable. And so the psyche began
building a fortress around that child.
Over the years, a person may forget why that fortress was
built. The defense becomes so deeply fused with the personality that it begins
to look like character itself. Literature and film have shown us many such
human matryoshkas – from Kavalerov in Olesha’s Envy to Afonya (from the
film Afonya, directed by Georgiy Daneliya, 1975), beneath whose cynicism we
gradually glimpse profound loneliness.
It turns out that great vulnerability can lie beneath the
most repellent behavior. Emotions often come in layers, which is why fighting
only the outward reaction may accomplish very little. A person can spend years
telling themselves “Don’t be angry,” without noticing the resentment beneath
the anger, the fear beneath the resentment, and the old pain beneath the fear.
Inner work begins not with the question “How do I get rid of this?” but with
“What is this protecting?”
But understanding another person’s matryoshka does not
erase the need for boundaries. We can recognize fear behind aggression, a sense
of deprivation behind envy, and a wounded child behind hatred – and still
refuse to allow an adult to hurt us. Understanding where a behavior comes from
does not mean excusing it. Sometimes those closest to such a person spend years
trying to melt the ice with love, patience, and compromise. But until the
person themselves is willing to look at their own protective layers, attempts
to remove them may only provoke yet another defense. Unfortunately, such people
are often unwilling to do this inner work. It is far easier to see the source
of one’s pain in everyone else than to finally ask oneself: “What am I doing
wrong in my relationships with others?”
And yet we should not be too quick to look for
matryoshkas only in other people. There are psychological matryoshkas within
each of us. They may be far less sinister, but the principle is the same:
helplessness may hide beneath irritation, fear beneath control, insecurity
beneath criticism, and fear of intimacy beneath emotional coldness.
And perhaps the most useful question of all is: “What is
hidden inside me?”
