How many analysts have ever heard an analysand refer to someone in a dream or in his life as an enemy? We do not like Smith or Jones, he may be a rival in a job or another member of a triangle, but there is not that sense of personal complicatedness, of unremitting, fateful bound-upness that “enemy” implies.
We have interiorized our enemies, and we fight them in a peculiarly personalized way as the body, the animus, regressions, power drives. But the implacable hatred and sense of keenwittedness (Plutarch declares that enemies keep us on guard and sharp), the constant struggle with the outer enemy seems to occur only in family problems—with the parents or brother-in-law, or wife, or her lawyer.
Perhaps, one must be altogether redeemed from the family, not just to have friends, but even more, to have enemies. Perhaps enemies require quite a bit of ego development, and the ability to have enemies might be a sign of a sound ego. The reverse might also be true. Family problems become overloaded with inauthentic love and hatred, because there is so little other personal opportunity for these emotions in our times.
— Friends and Enemies, Inhuman Relations, UE 7