Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune or Envy, Humiliation and Pleasure

My very clever (and even more charming) colleague Wendy recently tweeted about a new book Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune. It has three subject headings:

Mr Schadenfreude (with a bow to Roger Hargreaves) copyright Creative Commons/Flickr dullhunk

I'm not unfamiliar with word as my husband Richard and his cousin Betty are German and often bandy it around. You might not think folks would write about this ... and yet you would be wrong (which sends a delicate shiver of pleasure up my back). I've also seen it defined as shameful joy. Imagine someone very loud and obnoxious on a hot summer's day showing off in public and then their ice cream falls out of it's cone and that you smile behind your hand. Now bottle that feeling and voila you have schadenfreude.

So, as a gentle antidote to the holidays, please enjoy some on me. Pardon me, as I fall on my face while pompously leaving the room. Enjoy!

Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune

"A delightful book, full of jokes and confessions. A hilarious quest to understand life's ultimate guilty pleasure Schadenfreude - enjoying the pain and failures of others - is an all-too-familiar feeling. It has perplexed philosophers and psychologists for centuries but, in a time of polarised politics, twitter trolls and 'sidebars of shame', has never been more relevant. Recent studies have shown that we smile more at a rival's loss than at our own success. But why can it be so much fun to witness another's distress? And what, if anything, should we do about it? In Schadenfreude, historian of emotions Tiffany Watt Smith offers expert insight and advice. Ranging across thinkers from Nietzsche to Homer Simpson, investigating the latest scientific research, and collecting some outrageous confessions on the way - she reveals how everyone, babies, nuns, your most trusted friends, are enjoying your misfortunes. But rather than an emotional glitch, she argues, Schadenfreude can reveal profound truths about our relationships with others and our sense of who we are. Frank, warm and laugh-out-loud funny, Schadenfreude makes the case for thinking afresh about this much-maligned emotion - and perhaps, even, embracing it."

The Joy of Pain: Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature

"Few people will easily admit to taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. But who doesn't enjoy it when an arrogant but untalented contestant is humiliated on American Idol, or when the embarrassing vice of a self-righteous politician is exposed, or even when an envied friend suffers a small setback? The truth is that joy in someone else's pain - known by the German word schadenfreude- - permeates our society.In The Joy of Pain, psychologist Richard Smith, one of the world's foremost authorities on envy and shame, sheds much light on a feeling we dare not admit. Smith argues that schadenfreude is a natural human emotion, one worth taking a closer look at, as it reveals much about who we are as human beings. We have a passion for justice. Sometimes, schadenfreude can feel like getting one's revenge, when the suffering person has previously harmed us. But most of us are also motivated to feel good about ourselves, Smith notes, and look for ways to maintain a positive sense of self. One common way to do this is to compare ourselves to others and find areas where we are better. Similarly, the downfall of others - especially when they have seemed superior to us - can lead to a boost in our self-esteem, a lessening of feelings of inferiority. This is often at the root of schadenfreude. As the author points out, most instances of schadenfreude are harmless, on par with the pleasures of light gossip. Yet we must also be mindful that envy can motivate, without full awareness, the engineering of the misfortune we delight in. And envy-induced aggression can take us into dark territory indeed,as Smith shows as he examines the role of envy and schadenfreude in the Nazi persecution of the Jews."

We have over 100,000 images in Toronto Public Library's Digital Archive, yet the closest I could come to a schadenfreude moment was this picture, and even it, while mildly amusing, is not quite right. And just to be honest I love the all things royalty.

Toronto Star photo 1973 by Reg Innell, A Gust of Wind Lifts the Queen's Skirt.

Lastly, I will leave you with this title and the slightly cheerful thought that if you fear you are a victim of schadenfreude, you can always embrace it.

Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness

Examines the ways that embracing socially awkward situations, even when they lead to embarrassment and self-consciousness, also provide the opportunity to test oneself and to recognize how people are connected to each other.