What do I give up in exchange for my loyalty to the group?
A white Christian woman married to a white Christian man lives in a community. She has little leeway in her independent choices. She must go to a church, give parties, go to parties, accept her husband's pay check - all in exchange for X. X = ? If she divorces him or goes to college or joins a Democratic group or volunteers with a Women's Group she will be ostracized and he will suffer. What does she swap for her loyalty to her community and her funding source?
Or a white woman married to a rising political man in D.C., both moderate Democrats. What does she swap for her loyalty to her community and her funding source?
Or a white progressive woman working in a progressive nonprofit married to a white progressive man, a rising attorney. What does she swap for her loyalty to her community and her funding source?
Sometimes being placed on a pedestal can disguise one’s subordination. That applies to these hypothetical women but also to anyone whose subjection and exploitation are framed by the group as a position of honor. They are embedded in the delusion that their sacrifice is, in fact, a gift. This is easier to see in the Christian “trad wife” but can operate in any relationship of domination. The recognition and admiration they derive from the tribe they want to be an honored member of is predicated on that self-negation. To sharpen the paradox, what they “get” is directly tied to what they give up.
Very well-said, Dr. Ducat. I'm happy to have found your book and your Substack. The last eight years have been a Masterclass in personality disorders, psychopathology in politics, and the effect on populations. It's very important for a large percentage of a given population to know what they're in the presence of and to understand how they're being affected. I'm hoping that works like yours are raising the kind of consciousness that will offset the unconscious trance of the MAGAs, and protect America from the tyranny of sociopathic dictators.
I thank you for your marvelous book and I am in agreement sentence by sentence. 😊🙏
Thank you, Madeline, for taking the time to share your thoughtful comments and kind feedback. If you have found the book valuable and want to spread the word, a five-star review on Amazon would bring more eyeballs to it. (Let's hope minds and action in the world will follow.) Take care. Stephen
If you can borrow the $ to fund your escape and your subsequent earning, and if you're young enough to make a new community elsewhere, in the upper middle class, good. Otherwise not good.
That makes sense, but there are vital psychological preconditions for escape to be conceivable or even desirable. It is the dilemma of every cult member whose subjectivity and agency have been colonized, something Erich Fromm, Franz Fanon, and Hannah Arendt struggled to understand and convey in their work. Yes, once those shackles are broken, one can flee, fund, and co-create a new community founded on mutuality.
Martha, if I understand you correctly, I believe the X factor that people "give up" in order to belong to certain communities is their individuated selfhood, the right to differ in opinion, belief, attitude, behavior, even appearance. Cult leaders, dictators, and abusive people of all kinds have this in common: They are severely, narcissistically fragile individuals who are driven to annihilate the individuality of others in order to create mirror-like images of themselves. They can't tolerate "otherness" because the very existence of an individuated other threatens their own very fragile sense of selfhood.
Originally, this is a normal need. As infants, we need caregivers to be perfectly attuned to our needs in order to survive physically and emotionally. So the need for mirroring, to feel ourselves reflected back to us accurately, is a normal need. It is the relational medium in which our own sense of existing and mattering develops. When this fundamental, relational need is insufficiently met, however, our good feeling about ourselves suffers and cannot develop coherently and cohesively.
As we grow up we will have increasingly desperate needs to have this mirroring fulfilled by others in our lives. Our personalities can take on a controlling aspect and when we find others who are vulnerable to this interpersonal dynamic we experience the power to get what we need by demanding that they become perfectly attuned to us at all times, mirroring and reflecting back that they "see" us and are responding to our every need.
There are plenty of people who will give up their need for differentiated selfhood for the felt safety of belonging. I believe this is one of the dynamics that Stephen is addressing. MAGAs are getting their own needs met by perfectly meeting the mirroring needs of Donald Trump. The women you describe in your post are willing to give up their right to their own mind, their own psychic sphere of individuated agency, in order to experience the more basic sense of belonging to, and being accepted by, a particular man or an organized group.
Trump can't tolerate other "selves." He desperately needs perfect mirroring, perfect attunement from others and will quickly melt down into narcissistic rages when he can't get what he needs. All dictators are like this...narcissistically fragile/ narcissistically rageful. The upsetting reality is that there are millions of people in our country who find their own sense of security in fulfilling his pathological needs, and that further emboldens him and inflates the delusion that he's entitled to more and more power. Controlling narcissists are governed by the unconscious principle that "I exist by making sure that you don't exist as a separate self...you only exist to attend to me." And some folks are willing to do that.
Or it's just don't feel the need to think that much. I'm related to a very nice Republican woman who is perfectly content in her marriage, her job, her income, her family, church, book club, volunteering. She doesn't feel the need to be anything else.
I know what you mean, Martha, different strokes for different folks. We can't tell from the outside how anybody feels on the inside and if she's perfectly content and happy, that's wonderful.
I know an 82 year-old woman who waited on her husband hand and foot for 60 years. Her family didn't like to see her in such an obsequious position but she was blissfully happy and told me so many times.
People were happy to go to rallies and hear Hitler scream and rant about the Jews. Trump followers see this cruel, self-absorbed sociopath as almost a figure of worship. Some things are hard to fathom and I think that's what Dr. Ducat is pondering in his book and here in his substack... what makes some people follow dangerous demagogues?
What have they swapped it for?
Forgive my density, but I'm not sure what you mean.
What do I give up in exchange for my loyalty to the group?
A white Christian woman married to a white Christian man lives in a community. She has little leeway in her independent choices. She must go to a church, give parties, go to parties, accept her husband's pay check - all in exchange for X. X = ? If she divorces him or goes to college or joins a Democratic group or volunteers with a Women's Group she will be ostracized and he will suffer. What does she swap for her loyalty to her community and her funding source?
Or a white woman married to a rising political man in D.C., both moderate Democrats. What does she swap for her loyalty to her community and her funding source?
Or a white progressive woman working in a progressive nonprofit married to a white progressive man, a rising attorney. What does she swap for her loyalty to her community and her funding source?
Sometimes being placed on a pedestal can disguise one’s subordination. That applies to these hypothetical women but also to anyone whose subjection and exploitation are framed by the group as a position of honor. They are embedded in the delusion that their sacrifice is, in fact, a gift. This is easier to see in the Christian “trad wife” but can operate in any relationship of domination. The recognition and admiration they derive from the tribe they want to be an honored member of is predicated on that self-negation. To sharpen the paradox, what they “get” is directly tied to what they give up.
Very well-said, Dr. Ducat. I'm happy to have found your book and your Substack. The last eight years have been a Masterclass in personality disorders, psychopathology in politics, and the effect on populations. It's very important for a large percentage of a given population to know what they're in the presence of and to understand how they're being affected. I'm hoping that works like yours are raising the kind of consciousness that will offset the unconscious trance of the MAGAs, and protect America from the tyranny of sociopathic dictators.
I thank you for your marvelous book and I am in agreement sentence by sentence. 😊🙏
Thank you, Madeline, for taking the time to share your thoughtful comments and kind feedback. If you have found the book valuable and want to spread the word, a five-star review on Amazon would bring more eyeballs to it. (Let's hope minds and action in the world will follow.) Take care. Stephen
What I call Swap.
Here's the dilemma: Money.
If you can borrow the $ to fund your escape and your subsequent earning, and if you're young enough to make a new community elsewhere, in the upper middle class, good. Otherwise not good.
That makes sense, but there are vital psychological preconditions for escape to be conceivable or even desirable. It is the dilemma of every cult member whose subjectivity and agency have been colonized, something Erich Fromm, Franz Fanon, and Hannah Arendt struggled to understand and convey in their work. Yes, once those shackles are broken, one can flee, fund, and co-create a new community founded on mutuality.
And what are the catalysts to that desire to flee?
I think they are personal desire for fulfillment and seeing others getting it done - together. Not alone.
Martha, if I understand you correctly, I believe the X factor that people "give up" in order to belong to certain communities is their individuated selfhood, the right to differ in opinion, belief, attitude, behavior, even appearance. Cult leaders, dictators, and abusive people of all kinds have this in common: They are severely, narcissistically fragile individuals who are driven to annihilate the individuality of others in order to create mirror-like images of themselves. They can't tolerate "otherness" because the very existence of an individuated other threatens their own very fragile sense of selfhood.
Originally, this is a normal need. As infants, we need caregivers to be perfectly attuned to our needs in order to survive physically and emotionally. So the need for mirroring, to feel ourselves reflected back to us accurately, is a normal need. It is the relational medium in which our own sense of existing and mattering develops. When this fundamental, relational need is insufficiently met, however, our good feeling about ourselves suffers and cannot develop coherently and cohesively.
As we grow up we will have increasingly desperate needs to have this mirroring fulfilled by others in our lives. Our personalities can take on a controlling aspect and when we find others who are vulnerable to this interpersonal dynamic we experience the power to get what we need by demanding that they become perfectly attuned to us at all times, mirroring and reflecting back that they "see" us and are responding to our every need.
There are plenty of people who will give up their need for differentiated selfhood for the felt safety of belonging. I believe this is one of the dynamics that Stephen is addressing. MAGAs are getting their own needs met by perfectly meeting the mirroring needs of Donald Trump. The women you describe in your post are willing to give up their right to their own mind, their own psychic sphere of individuated agency, in order to experience the more basic sense of belonging to, and being accepted by, a particular man or an organized group.
Trump can't tolerate other "selves." He desperately needs perfect mirroring, perfect attunement from others and will quickly melt down into narcissistic rages when he can't get what he needs. All dictators are like this...narcissistically fragile/ narcissistically rageful. The upsetting reality is that there are millions of people in our country who find their own sense of security in fulfilling his pathological needs, and that further emboldens him and inflates the delusion that he's entitled to more and more power. Controlling narcissists are governed by the unconscious principle that "I exist by making sure that you don't exist as a separate self...you only exist to attend to me." And some folks are willing to do that.
Or it's just don't feel the need to think that much. I'm related to a very nice Republican woman who is perfectly content in her marriage, her job, her income, her family, church, book club, volunteering. She doesn't feel the need to be anything else.
I know what you mean, Martha, different strokes for different folks. We can't tell from the outside how anybody feels on the inside and if she's perfectly content and happy, that's wonderful.
I know an 82 year-old woman who waited on her husband hand and foot for 60 years. Her family didn't like to see her in such an obsequious position but she was blissfully happy and told me so many times.
People were happy to go to rallies and hear Hitler scream and rant about the Jews. Trump followers see this cruel, self-absorbed sociopath as almost a figure of worship. Some things are hard to fathom and I think that's what Dr. Ducat is pondering in his book and here in his substack... what makes some people follow dangerous demagogues?
Testosterone is a dangerous drug, but what a rush.