Lipton’s Journal/January 25, 1955/267

From Project Mailer

To continue 265, I wonder if the difference between the saint and the psychopath is that what the psychopath feels for only a moment (but feels strongly and acts on it), the saint feels more or less permanently. As an example would be the love I felt for my father this afternoon. If it makes a permanent change in our relations, at least in my attitude toward him (by which I do not mean that there will be no ups and downs, but rather that the “average” of my feelings and expressions toward him is different) then I was feeling saintly emotion. But if it’s all gone in a few days and I slip back into feeling the old things about him, then it was a psychopathic expression. In other words, it is not that psychopaths are “heartless” but that the bidding of their heart is isolated. So they love and hate in isolated apparently contradictory “bursts.” The saint is almost always in communion with his “heart.” Therefore he always loves. He loves because finally hatred is always always the frozen echo of love, and the saint is aware of the love he feels and has dissolved all hatred in himself.