26 Nov The Leaders Who Hurt Without Knowing It
We tend to imagine cruelty as loud, intentional, or obvious. But the most harmful version is quiet. Respectable. Wrapped in discipline. Justified as “the right thing to do.”
Freud (1923/1975) called this the superego – the inner judge that attacks instead of guides.
Klein (1932/1975) showed how it becomes cruel when fear and love fuse too early.
And Ferenczi (1933/2011) explained how children adapt to the emotional gaps of adults, not their intentions.
This is how a dangerous mechanism appears, one I see everywhere in leadership, parenting, and relationships: the “sweet lemon.”
It means: “I hurt you now, so you’ll be better later.”
Cruelty disguised as care. Control disguised as responsibility. A psychological alchemy that makes harm feel virtuous.
Leaders use it when they push teams to exhaustion “so they grow.” Parents use it when they pressure children relentlessly “so they succeed.” Partners use it when they correct instead of comfort “so the relationship stays strong.”
On the surface, it looks like commitment. Underneath, it is fear running the show.
And sometimes, it appears in the quiet corners of friendship.
Not long ago, a friend of more than ten years wrote me a long WhatsApp message after a security guard scolded me for parking incorrectly in a business complex he oversees. Instead of asking what happened, he reprimanded me, explained the rules, and banned me from the parking entirely. He wasn’t angry; he was moral. He believed he was doing “the right thing,” even if it meant freezing a friendship. A classic sweet lemon move: “I must apply the rules, even if it hurts you. Even if it hurts us.”
It felt cold. But it wasn’t malice. It was a man obeying a harsher rule inside himself – the kind Klein would call the internal “bad object,” the one that tolerates no deviation.
And this is the uncomfortable truth:
Many high performers, many “good” parents, many “principled” managers operate not from strength, but from fear. Not from clarity, but from conditioning. Not from freedom, but from an internal law they never chose.
The cost is enormous: teams suffocate, couples lose tenderness, children grow up strong but scared, and friendships fracture under the weight of “responsibility.”
The good news is that this system can be dismantled. Strachey (1934) showed that change begins when someone finally experiences a relationship where imperfection isn’t punished. Roussillon (2014) adds that empathy only grows when difference is no longer perceived as a threat.
Therapy helps. Good leadership helps. Self-reflection helps. Anything that allows a person to say, even once: “I don’t have to hurt you to help you. And I don’t have to hurt myself to feel worthy.”
Cruelty often arrives dressed as duty.
But healing begins the moment someone decides that being human is more important than being perfect.
References
Ferenczi, S. (2011). Confusion of tongues between adults and the child (Original work published 1933).
Freud, S. (1975). The ego and the id (Original work published 1923).
Klein, M. (1975). The psycho-analysis of children (Original work published 1932).
Roussillon, R. (2014). L’empathie maternelle.
Strachey, J. (1934). The nature of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.