Paradoxical alliances - Narcissistic Traps
In an era of individualism, isolation, and of a frantic race for survival, “success” of any kind, profit and even for domination, subjects seek to be part of various types of groups. They do that, so they can have some kind of support, share some kind of hope, avoid either psychic isolation and the ensuing fear or depression. The reasons are numerous indeed.
Even though some of those groups promote intellectual activities, research, recreation or aid, some others exhibit a narcissistic morbidity which could be a reflection or a response to equally morbid ideals that modern societies foster.
They are dynamic alliances of people within wider groups or society at large which aim at realising a phantasy of indestructibleness. More often than not, this aim is coupled with the pursuit of a narcissistic gain -either material or other- which is indifferent to the rights of others, or, worse still, moves against others.
Characteristics
It is typical of these groups that the “we” and “the others” constitute two sides of a paranoid dichotomy: one side should never ally or agree with the other. Whoever is outside the group, “the others”, are by definition negative, adversaries, toxic and dangerous. Thus they are to be avoided or, worse still, to be slandered with false statements, or even demonised.
The formation of such groups is often based on mundane problems: the fear of difference and opposition, of rivals in politics, religion or sports, the fear of a boss, the hatred for foreigners and many other things. The common thread of these problems though is that besides their apparent truthfulness, they are based on projections of negativism that their members have towards others.
Cohesiveness in these groups is founded on one very important ingredient: secrets or at least on the dissemination of rumors that there is a secret. Allusions, whispers, secrets and enigmatic behaviours under an overarching law of silence permeate the atmosphere. And we all know how the existence of something “hidden”, “classified”, of a “secret”, alters the dynamics of groups. It provokes confusion and fear among members. It necessitates an expectation for enlightenment, guidance, and cooperation with the team. The members inadvertently echo the existence of this secret: they behave in a rather paradoxical, confused and almost fearful manner. More often than not, they worry about themselves and their place within the group. That is why they are guided in acts which will confirm their being part of the group.
One can dare argue that these tactics could be characterised as “perverted”, because the group seeks to export the sense of destructiveness that it incubates among its members towards others, invalidating them in every insidious manner possible. The roles of members in such “perverted” groups are not usually clear, since there is a confusion over who is the leader and who is the follower. Everybody seems to be equal. Everybody watches and everybody is being watched. Moreover they only possess rudimentary information and impoverished ideas, as it is better not to know much. Subsequently, the members share a collective, and thus unwavering, certainty that they are smarter than the others, omnipotent, and invincible. As a team they seem to constitute the corpus of a paradoxical narcissism that lives by perverting reality, discrediting others, and methodologically aiming at their dethronement or impairment. Nonetheless, they are implementing their goals through ways which are usually socially acceptable. So courage is really needed, if one is to challenge them.
Members of such groups find it hard to object, differentiate or leave. If they do so, they will be insulted and diminished, albeit in a rather covert manner. However, it is characteristic that they are not entirely removed from the group; followers after all are vital for its existence.
These tactics remind us of micro-groups that existed and still do exist in schools and work places. Even when they do not opt for overt bullying tactics, they essentially develop un-friendly kernels of calumny against others. Sometimes it even seems that this tendency for derogation, belittlement, incrimination and insult of the other is their sole pursuit. It is a stance that creates divisiveness in their surroundings, mainly through lies. As we mentioned above it is a divisiveness that the group itself incubates and then extracts to the others around them.
The “society of masters”
A typical repercussion of living under the influence of such a narcissistic alliance is that the ego of the members ceases to invest in their own conceptual constructions and thoughts. These constructions have an apparent truthfulness because they are presented in an ambiance of non-negotiable certainty coupled with allusions for hidden “truths”. After all a lot of people seek to find themselves in groups or ambiances where the thoughts of members are identical. This probably pertains to the era of the fusional mother-infant relationship, when the thought of the mother and the child were in a natural union. There was no alterity back then. It was a way for the child to evade ambiguity and the fear it results to. The relationship was one of absolute trust and surrender to the care of someone else.
This seems to be the primary psychical benefit that such groups offer: for the sake of a happy narcissistic fusion, alterity is evaded, along with the “foreigner”, the “other” and the ambiguity that a relationship with them entails.
The formation of such homogenous groups, whose members do not recognise alterity, seems to be a distinctive characteristic of our era. In particular, some groups of young people who follow the principle of isolation, collectively designate enemies and then they wage war on them. Their coherence is based on a purely imaginary identification among members and usually their actions and violence have no limit. Charles Melman (2010) refers to modern “society of masters”, who derive their strength exactly from this imaginary collective identification. They reject whoever is different, often refusing to recognise that others are human beings too. They even reach a point when they desire their destruction. In such a society or micro-society a “retarded thought” (Melman, ibid. “pensée débile”) prevails, meaning a thought which does not take into account reality. The members believe in the merits of an absolute knowledge which should be imposed to others. It is erroneous and dangerous, because it can develop into a dogmatic and authoritarian one.
In reality, there is no absolute knowledge. The right to doubt is truly the one that shows high degree of intelligence…
Narcissistic seduction
The ways that the kernel of such group acts upon its members reminds us to what Racamier (1992) called “narcissistic seduction”. Even though Racamier was referring to the seduction that takes place amidst family members, one can argue that in this case too there is an equally mutual and invincible seduction, since members of the group identify with each other, and it is only there, in the group, that they feel recognised.
When narcissism serves certain fundamental needs of the subject, like a sense of security, ensuring of an identity against anxiety or even threat of a psychic annihilation or of a psychic “emptiness”, then the tactics employed in order to maintain a collective narcissistic union could become particularly cruel, since they are experienced as need and not as desire.
The narcissistic seduction which is mobilised in the context of a group is presented as an antidote to a mourning that never took place. Every member has to face either its own threat of loss or an actual loss. The common pattern though could be that they are entangled in an negation of this loss, both in a personal and a collective level. Actually, this negation may reflect a stance of the society at large. Because let us not forget that we live in a society which prompts towards pursuits of omnipotence (economic, cognitive, social and of numerous other kinds). We are living in a culture that does not acknowledge or accept a lack of any sort. So the dominant discourses refer, with rather pompous frivolousness, to narcissistic ideals, the ones that Christopher Lasch (1979) called “winning images”.
In a group, then, where narcissistic denial of any loss prevails, its members are used as soulless fetishes, beings without identity, de-subjectified for the sake of omnipotence, omniscience and jouissance of the “Other”. This Οther, the group, represents a part of their inner world. That is why they voluntary surrender their selves to it…
The problem with the predominant bonds within such groups is that while there is a high degree of cooperation among its members, around them a dangerous moat is being built. Their cooperation is thus proved pathogenic, because it alienates its members in various ways. At times the relation they develop with the group looks more like captivity in an exclusive relationship which does not allow for the intervening of a third party, a person outside the group.
Every member of the group forms part of a body, thus they are all both physically and psychically united. They constitute an omnipotent organism that challenges any external presence, any law. The members cannot and are not permitted to live on their own behalf, because that would be destructive for the narcissistic entity of the group. They lose the autonomy of their actions; they do not wish to mobilise themselves apart from the group. They lose the autonomy of their desire; they cannot relate affectively with other persons. They lose the autonomy of their judgement; they cannot master a clear sequence of thoughts or they can only have some transitory flashes.
In contrast within the group they feel indispensable, sought-after, needed, and strong. More often than not, in their quest to become indispensable to others, they become excessively prone to manipulation and subjection. And through their own manipulation, they unconsciously manipulate the group. They obey to the desires of the group or of its important members. They even reach a point when the actions they opt for, have not been explicitly demanded from them. Nonetheless, these actions are a response to a desire of the group. How something like that occurs?
With the help of two basic mechanisms: “de-mentalisation” and “en-gridment”.
De-mentalisation and operational states
If mentalisation is to be defined as a mental process in which sensory and affective stimuli are being transformed into representations and speech, then de-mentalisation could be defined as the annulment of such process. Therefore, it is a particularly challenging task for the soul, since it develops in a milieu of speaking beings.
Especially, in groups which are formed around a strongly idealised and admired, albeit terrifying person, the demand for annulment of autonomy of thought could prompt a member even towards de-mentalisation in order to merely survive (Aisenstein, 2005). And one could refer to numerous examples of certain political or religious regimes which imposed themselves in micro-communities - or societies at large. Consequently, someone is better off, if they do not understand much. Because this way, they would never find themselves in a position to oppose the authority of the group, something that could prove really dangerous.
The secondary psychic benefit of such a venture is that the subject assigns responsibility of their choices and actions to someone else. Therefore they themselves do not feel accountable for something, nor do they feel responsible. Moreover, they are escaping from the stress and psychic pain that something like that entails. In this rather non-realistic process, various mechanisms give a helping hand to the subject: repression, splitting of ego, negation of reality, and in extreme cases, the psychotic mechanism of “foreclosure” (Lacan, 1955-6) or dissociation.
What is the result of all the aforementioned processes? Once someone walks in the ambiance of their group, it is as if a spell is being cast upon them and they enter an “operational state”, where the subject does not seem to feel anything, they only operate. This state reminds us of those pervert situations that Pierra Aulagnier (1979) called “pathological alienation”. Through this term she described a network of people who, under the spell of a frantic idealisation of a group leader, surrender themselves to his/her guidance, denouncing the autonomy of their thought and blindly following his/her instructions, even if these instructions are to impose death - either their own or of others.
However, an idealised leader is not always a sine qua non component of such groups or micro-groups. Narcissistic traps, allergic to human possibility for thought and judgement, can also be organised otherwise: a kind of private culture is formed, to which the subjects respond by acting, without necessarily taking orders from someone. And this activity fully satisfies, reassures and fulfils the collective culture.
What really happens in such circumstances?
Trans-psychique processes
The distinctive characteristic of these groups is an interactive circuit which does not at all relate to the symbolic exchanges between subjects, or to communication through speech, representations, free thought, phantasies or “common sense”. It entirely rests on action and it occurs through a particular mechanism, that of “en-gridment” (Racamier, 1992, “engrènement”). This is a process during which the psychic dynamic of one person directly dominates the psychic space of the other without the mediation of phantasies, representations, transitional spaces or other subjects.
En-gridment is the vector of action and of hidden and occult transmissions. It is actually a form of intrusiveness. One could compare it to projective identification, during which a subject gets rid of sentiments and emotions, by making the other experience them. Yet, in en-gridment what is being transmitted like an electric current from one person to another is action, and this occurs within a context of absolute lack of thought. In those cases, a member of the team commits something that is a repressed, albeit ardent, desire of the others. And there is no need for an order or guidance, because desire seizes them. It is as if they are “bewitched”. They experience an absolute reassurance for the rightness of their act and an urge to immediately implement it. This way they become the perpetrator of others’ desire: the hand that commits something that the body -the team- decided.
It seems that when one becomes a member of a collective system of desires, they respond to the requirements of the position they take within this system. The position in a structure (Lévy-Strauss, 1949) then, proves stronger than “free will” or the so called “consciousness”…
Conclusion
Why does someone abandon themselves to the hands of such dubious groups, which at times can even be dangerous for their own mental health? Could it be that there they find an alternative to the fear that is provoked from the other and essentially from the unknown? Could the cause lie in prior traumatic encounters with reality? Is it an arrangement of paranoid stress? Or do some seek togetherness as an antidote to modern loneliness?
It would be worth examining the reasons why such alliances are so appealing. I personally believe that the uncertainty and subsequent desperation that the modern subject feels amidst the requirements of our era play a really important role. The projected models of “successful” individual along with the wide spread aggression that prevails, could incite fears for survival and acute narcissistic anxieties, which are demanding for the subject to cope with. In any case, the issue calls for a more thorough sociological, psychosocial and political research.
References
Aisenstein, Μ. (2005). Echec ou destruction du processus de pensée. In: F. Richard, F. and F. Urribarri (eds) Autour de l'oeuvre d'André Green-Enjeux pour une psychanalyse contemporaine. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Aulagnier, P. (1979). Les destins du plaisir - Aliénation-amour-passion, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Lacan, J. (1955-56). Les quatres concepts fondementaux de la psychanalyse: Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre III Paris: Essais.
Lasch, Ch. (1979). The Culture of Narcissism. New York: W.W.Norton&Company.
Lévy-Strauss, C. (1949). Les structures élémentaires de la parenté, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Μelman, Ch. (2010). La nouvelle économie psychique, Paris: Érès.
Racamier, P.-C. (1992). La génie des origines - Psychanalyse et psychose. Paris: Payot & Rivages.