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But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.” 1 Samuel 8:19-20
In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 17:6
(See other Bible verse translations at end of BOLG.)
The constellation of forces that are activated between members of society and their leaders is among the topics being explored in “Symbols and Individuation in Global Politics: The Case ofBarack Obama” on September 10, 2010. This blog entry explores one portion of that realm involving projection and introjection. It suggests some ideas for how any citizen might engage his/her leaders as part of their individuation process.
I offer a simple definition of terms. Introjection is a maneuver characterized by the unexamined incorporation of traits of another. Individuals with weak ego boundaries are more prone to use introjection as a defense mechanism. (Winnicott, DW. Home is Where We Start From: Essays by a Psychoanalyst.New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986. 50.)
Projection is somewhat antithetical to introjection in that one’s own unconscious content is projected outward upon the other. What is projected is then encountered as if it actually belonged to the otherperson to begin with. Projection is a fundamental mechanism by which we remain uniformed about ourselves. (A word of caution is in order.)
The recent discovery of mirror neurons in primates (including humans) should give us pause to cast all projection and introjection into some pathologic basket. These neurons are present in the motor cortex and are activated when we observe someone executing an act. It is as if our own motor strip is carrying out the act we observe; it may be a form of rehearsal. So, neurobiology may one day help us to better understand projection and introjection.
Political figures who are charismatic and able to resonate with individual & cultural complexes are likely to activate processes of projection and introjection in the individual. These forces may illuminate unconscious material and facilitate its integration into the personality. But it is also possible for political figures to become targets of our projections and also possible for us to introject aspects of these figures into our personalities without having authentic encounters with the Self.
President Obama’s ability to galvanize the electorate and to generate widespread participation was unprecedented. There remains some doubt about the claims that the vast majority of Obama’s contributors made small donations (under $200) but the breadth of participation that he either engendered or “appeared” to engender is notable. Individuals were lifted up during the campaign and a sense of unity among people of different backgrounds and even across national borders was kindled. Such broadly appealing (or irritating) leaders provide fertile ground for projection and introjection to take root.
Ask yourself what sort of relationship you developed with Obama during the period leading up to his election. Consider what sort of relationship you have with other leaders. How did the rise of President Lula da Silva, a union leader with limited formal education engage your projected hopes and/or fears? What role did introjection have in celebrating the indomitable and noble qualities displayed by President Mandela? How does President Sarkozy’s noble Hungarian family roots or his marriage to Carla Bruni contribute to his wide appeal? (He might a target for projections of royalty with a common touch.) Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi affords another powerful example of how leaders may receive our projections and introjections. Does Berlusconi’s alleged ties to organized crime and his triumphs in several prosecutions tap our own desire to be outside the law? And then there is the fascinating example provided by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a scientist whose family enjoyed unusual freedom of travel between East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. How has her own personal capacity to unify opposites within herself captivated the German people who were struggling to unify East and West? When Chancellor Merkel resisted EU pressure during the sovereign debt crisis what feelings toward the German people were provoked in your psyche?
In asking those questions I am inviting each of us to explore how leaders become lightning rods for our own psychological process. I was a youngster when President Kennedy was stuck down by an assassin’s bullet and watched in horror the reports of Dr. Martin Luther King’s murder. Within two months I endured the defeat of seeing Senator Robert Kennedy gunned down. President Obama was the first political figure to heal those wounds and I engaged more than I had ever engaged. I allowed myself to hope and in the course of those months I remembered the painful wounds I’d suffered at a tender age. Loss of several idealized objects produced a sort of exquisite corpse to which President Obama added the most recent touch. I have remained deeply afraid for President Obama but I have also been delivered from what had been a forty year political slumber.
Not long ago my sister expressed her outrage at what she perceived as President Obama’s betrayal of campaign promises. He had cozied up to Wall Street’s powerful elites, I offered a more sober perspective. I suggest that President Obama’s presence in office alone might have more lasting and transformative effects than many (perhaps all) the policies he pursues. It will be difficult to look upon the Office of the President in the same way now that an African American has occupied that hallowed spot. Though I know very little about President Lincoln’s tenure in office, the impression of a self-educated man capable of writing beautiful and lyric words (the Gettysburg Address) is etched into my political character.
I am dimly aware that President Obama helped illumine the inner landscape of my childhood losses. If projection and introjection were at play, the result was helpful. But there is an unconscious domain to my relationship with this man I call President. I am a Cuban-American born on US soil. I have lived on that hyphen with a measure of uncertainty about where I fit in to the fabric of American society. I suspect that President Obama receives my projections about the immigrant experience. Early in his candidacy, conversations about whether or not he was black enough combined with the vehement attacks upon him for attending Rev. Jeremiah Wrights church struck deep chords in me about what it means to succeed in White-Anglo culture and the price I’ve paid for blending in. But I have also marveled at the President’s capacity to reject the white majorities definition of him. His example empowers me to be less concerned with what others might think about a passionate, expressive, festive Cuban spirit that has always been an irrepressible part of me.
Whatever negative aspects of projection and introjection that have been aroused by my relationship with President Obama remain unconscious. I suspect my desire to have a deliverer, a king in the mold of the ancient Israelites is one complex that has been aroused but there are likely many more. I am hopeful that projection and introjection may recede with time and that in its place will emerge a mature political self. That political self may be better equipped to take full advantage of the psychological impact that leaders exert while avoiding the dangers that anyone who attempts to escape from freedom.
Take a moment to examine your own psychological relationship with Obama or any other political figure. We are interested in hearing from you about the psychological dance you’ve had with political leaders.
Len Cruz, MD (First appeared at www/ashevillejungcenter.org/blog on August 17, 2010)
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