When
I see a Jew who hates Jews and blames Israel for the plight of the
Palestinians, or an American who hates Bush, the Republican Party,
commerce and America's history, I have the sense that this kind of self
hatred is a mental illness. The illness can be mild or it can be
severe.
My concern is that the index of mental illnesses, DSM IV treats self-hatred as a sub-set of paranoia , personality disorder and a few other mental categories. I think self-hatred stands alone and the other categories are a sub-set of self-hatred.
First, look at what it does. Self-hatred selects from a wide array of one's social categories (employee, daughter, baby boomer, New Yorker, late riser, white, black, musician....etc) the one that already has plenty of hostile social antagonism and identifies with it. That is why we have so many self-hating anti-Americans, so many self-hating Jews and self-hating whites.
Second, look at what happens in severe
cases. Self-hating people often become, depressed, viciously and
uncontrollably angry, sometimes violent and often develop disorders
such as bulimia, anorexia, paranoia and drug (alcohol) addiction.
Third, the illness has degrees of severity. Many people with self-hatred are perfectly functional because their hatred finds others with the same illness, or they learn how to suppress their illness around others who are not sympathetic. On the other hand, there are severe cases where the person destroys their entire life like Bobby Fischer. I suspect that suicides include a large proportion of self-hatred cases.
I'm not a therapist. I don't work in a mental institution. I'm just a thinker who is making these observations but I suggest it as a Ph.D. thesis for those among my readers who are looking for a field of research.