2.3 Psychological Interpretations of Power
2.3.1 Depth Psychology and the Psychoanalytic Tradition
Depth Psychology is the term given to the traditions of psychology that focus on the unconscious as central to an understanding of human behaviour (Gabriel 1999).
Sigmund Freud, writing in the early 1900’s, is one of the best-known and earliest contributors to this tradition of psychology and was the founder of the practice of psychoanalysis. In spite of the many changes which psychoanalysis has undergone since its beginnings, the unconscious remains at the heart of its argument (Gabriel 1999;
Neumann 1969; Wertheimer 2012). “The essential claim of depth psychology is that there is much about being human that remains hidden to the eye, indeed, even to thought at all” (Craig 2007: 317). Freud sought to make the study of the subconscious the object of serious, empirically testable investigations using psychoanalysis.
However, he recognised the limitations of this approach due to the intangible nature of his study (Craig 2007). Scientific rigour and objectivity were key considerations amongst behavioural psychologists, who unlike depth psychologists, focussed on responses to external stimuli, rather than the individual’s relationship with their inner selves.
Behaviourism is a loose description of the number of approaches extending from the Russian psychologist, Pavlov (1927) who trained dogs to salivate to unrelated stimuli, to therapists who use cognitive therapy, modelling and models of association and reinforcement to understand and assist learning and behavioural change (Hayes 2012).
Based on his research and applications in behavioural psychology, Skinner (1948) wrote the novel ‘Walden Two’ which described an ideal world of freedom and justice in which one authority figure makes the decisions about who is able and less able. Like Plato, writing two thousand years before him, Skinner believed that an authority figure
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is necessary, even though they carry immense responsibility. Behavioural psychology developed into an objective, experimental branch of science with its goal being the prediction and control of behaviour (Hayes 2012). The main contribution of these behavioural researchers was the introduction of learning through association or what is known as classical conditioning. The assumption of these theorists is that people need to adapt to the mainstream, dominant culture (Schuitevoerder 2000). This school of psychology was criticised for limiting its principles to those drawn from animal behaviour (Hayes 2012) and thus did little to challenge the notions of power or explore the dynamics in human power relations. However, recent debates within the field of behavioural psychology emphasise the parallels between the behavioural paradigm and the humanistic tradition which will be discussed in section 2.3.2 of this chapter (Adams 2012; Hayes 2012; Wertheimer 2012). Adams argues that the field of psychology has focussed too critically on the divisions amongst various schools of thought rather than the similarities in working towards the betterment of the human condition (Adams 2012: 8).
Despite their similarities however, the fundamental assumptions of the behavioural model are quite different from many of the depth psychologists such as Freud and Jung writing in the early 1900’s, who were more interested in the individuation process and the inner psyche of the individual rather than the process of controlling behaviour. The challenge of depth psychologists is not the adaptation of the individual to society, but the loss of connection of individuals to their deeper instinct and inner selves resulting in problematic behaviour in societies and the misdirected use of both personal and social power. Carl Jung describes this in his book, “Two Essays on Analytical Psychology”, (Jung 1953: 4) writing shortly after the First World War, when he says, “The great problems of humanity were never yet solved by general laws, but only through regeneration of the attitudes of individuals. If ever there was a time when self-reflection was the absolutely necessary and only right thing, it is now, in our present catastrophic epoch.”
Focusing inward and on individuals as a way of addressing and resolving personal and collective problems of power has continued to be an important approach to dealing with the issues of abuse of power. This approach is reflected in the field of psychoanalysis which was established by Freud and further developed by Jung (McGuire 1974). Many
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theorists have applied a psychoanalytic approach to organisations and the study of leadership and power motivations. Debate within the field of psychoanalysis and depth psychology generated varied perspectives on the subject by those within the field, including Freud and Jung. Possibly the most significant contributions to our shifting understanding of approaches to power within the field of psychoanalysis and its applications to organisations within this school of tradition were:
The ego and its extreme manifestation in narcissistic behaviour (Craig 2007;
Freud 1933; Gabriel 1999; McGuire 1974);
The need for human identification with authority figures (Berne 1965; Freud 1933; Kets de Vries 2006);
Jung’s writings on the soul and the transformational power of introspection (Compton 2005; Davis 2011; Hayes 2012; Jung 1953, 1960, 1964).
These approaches to power from within the field of psychoanalysis are discussed in more detail in the following sub-topics.
2.3.1.1 Narcissism
Unlike Jung, Freud rejected the view of the unconscious as a spiritual or mystical entity, but as a collection of ideas and desires which have undergone repression, which cannot be accessed through introspection (Gabriel 1999). These unconscious ideas, according to Freud, cannot be discussed freely because powerful psychic forces keep them repressed. Repression, which was seen by Freud as a form of mental defence against threatening psychic phenomena, lies at the heart of Freudian and depth psychology.
Repressed ideas do not disappear without a trace from a person’s life, but they seek expression in various subterfuges. Psychoanalysis developed as a powerful process of yielding extraordinary insights into human motivation; but also a potentially dangerous process, which when abused could lead to false and harmful conclusions (Craig 2007;
Gabriel 1999).
Psychoanalysis developed as an approach that focuses on how and when different wishes and desires manifest themselves and how they are acted upon or are defended against (Gabriel 1999). It focuses on mental conflict, its origins, which may lie in clashing desires or in the demands made by external reality and its resolutions which
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may lead to fresh conflicts, symptoms and inhibitions. Freud (1933) defined an aspect of the human psyche as the ‘id’, a large area of the psyche inaccessible to consciousness, untainted by culture or civilization, with no sense of time or reason, whose influence on our lives can only be studied indirectly. Another side to the psyche was termed the ‘ego’ which represented the principle of mental functioning, of reality testing; the seat of consciousness; and the mental agency specifically responsible for the sense of unity and integrity which we each experience as the ‘self’. Freud believed that various defence mechanisms protect the ego. The analysis of ego’s defence mechanisms forms the central focus of a tradition in depth psychology, also known as ego psychology which has flourished in the western world since the 1930s (Gabriel 1999).
In examining the repressed and unconscious impulses of the psyche and its defence of the ego, Freud focused on the pathology of the power hungry individual through the study of narcissism.
The concept of narcissism has been described by Gabriel (1999) as shifting the ego from its position as agent of adaptation to agent of self-gratification. Narcissism in its extreme form is recorded as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2000, published by the American Psychiatric Association (Kets de Vries 2006). In this form it manifests in delusional behaviour pertaining to grandiosity, need for admiration and interpersonal exploitation. Kets de Vries (2006) describes the development of narcissism and how it is intricately connected with leadership and power. Narcissism develops from children trying to retain the bliss and perfection of early infantile days by grandiose, exhibitionist images of themselves and all powerful, idealised images of their parents (Gabriel 1999). In limited doses, these developments are natural and necessary for self-esteem and self-identity. In moderate doses creativity and self-confidence can’t exist without it. Kets de Vries (2006) refers to constructive narcissism which reflects healthy good parenting and reactive narcissism which develops in people who are wounded and often translates into vindictive and vengeful behaviour by people in positions of power.
In a research study on narcissism, Gebauer, Sedikidis, Verplanken and Maio (2012) reveal a model of narcissism which distinguishes between agentic-narcissists, whose self-satisfying motives focus on individual power gains and superior individual achievements and communal narcissists whose motives are the same, but achieved in a
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communal setting. Whether the focus is on narcissistic gratification through means of individualistic focus or communal focus on appearing to have the interests of others at heart, both of these forms of narcissism represents a significant vehicle through which power can be exercised (Gebauer et al. 2012). Research also suggests that authoritarianism on a massive scale and narcissism in individual leaders provided the psychological underpinning of facism (Kets de Vries 2006). Narcissism, according to Kets de Vries (2006), leads to the shadow side of leadership that are recognisable in dictators such as Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, Milosevic, Kim Jong II and Mugabe. But he believes while narcissism exists in the workplace, it is far less recognisable due to the limits typically placed on authority.
2.3.1.2 Authority Role Models
Another significant contribution of Freud’s (1933) work on the ‘ego’ was to understand how and why individuals identify with authority figures. Identification was used to describe a psychological process in which the ego seeks to identify an aspect of itself with some other object in keeping with the constraints of social acceptability. These
‘rules’ of society were seen as being the province of the super-ego and were really rules of conduct demanded by parents and other significant authority figures. According to depth psychologists all relationships are coloured by our previous relationships and we act towards people in the present as if they are people in our past (Kets de Vries 2006).
The first social relationships to be observed with the family are instrumental in developing attitudes later in life. How we deal with power and authority in the past determines how we will deal with it in our later relationships.
Eric Berne (1965) developed the notion further that early relationships inform adult behaviour in his popular Transactional Analysis Theory. The theory highlights the significance of the influence of the parental authority figure on an individual’s inner world and outward behaviour. Berne’s theory focuses on the transactions between individuals and how they generate transitions between ego states. The natural power relation between the adult and child ego state will manifest as a result of an individual’s own response to their past experiences of authority and is often used in understanding the concept of role models in adult development relating to early childhood authority figures (McAdams, Josselson & Lieblich 2006a). Identification with authority has a
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bearing on how power models are constructed within leadership roles which will be dealt with further in section 2.4.1.1 on positional power in organisations. Another contribution of psychoanalysis which is often applied within an organisational context is Jung’s notion of transformational power.
2.3.1.3 Jung’s Transformative Power
According to Davis (2011) Jung’s fascination with and acknowledgement of various ancient eastern spiritual traditions fostered his belief in the self-liberating power of introspection as well as the transformative power of mythic imagery and the reconciliation of opposites. In his exploration of reconciling opposites he also became interested in the notion of the union of male and female aspects stemming from the eastern philosophy of the Yin and the Yang (Jung 1953). While ‘female’ psychology had been the subject of many of Freud’s writing, Jung’s integrative approach was a novel contribution to understanding the psychology of men and women (Hayes 2012).
Jung’s fascination with human liberation, began a movement in psychology that shifted psychoanalysis from a diagnostic ‘illness’ model towards a model that tried to understand the human process of transformation and development. Jung’s exploration of eastern religions, such as Buddhism, led him to see the psyche as a primary instrument through which individuals can transcend their ego. Spiritual awakening was described in Jungian terms as a process that would lead the individual "from the ego to the self, from the unconscious to consciousness, from the personal to the transpersonal, the holy, the realization that the macrocosm is being mirrored in the microcosm of the human psyche" (Moacanin 2003: 67). According to Hayes (2012) the engagement of Jung with eastern philosophy and religion made a profound and lasting contribution to the dialogue between eastern and western schools of thought, while addressing many of contemporary culture's most pressing issues. Foremost among these in his mind was the need for humanity to return to its’ inner roots, to reconnect with the powerful and ever present psychic structures that guide the process of human development. Jung’s approach incorporated new perspectives on power into a field which had typically been dominated by western scientific thought. It also contributed to the Humanistic field of psychology which furthered the emphasis on personal power through human wellbeing and growth (Compton 2005).
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