Characteristics of Masters and Slaves Essay Example For Students

Characteristics of Masters and Slaves Essay This paper is about the characteristics of Masters and Slaves and the similarities in the personalities of people like Hitler and Jim Jones, the leader of Jonestown, in Guyana, where he ordered several hundred of his followers to commit suicide. They, like the millions of Germans who gave up their lives for their Fuhrer, obeyed. Why?Rousseau said that everybody emerges out of early childhood either with a slave mentality or with that of a tyrant. These terms can well be applied to the extremes of two defensive existential positions, for at about age three the child decides either that he must submit, be a slave or that hell have to keep trying to find ways to control others at all costs, to become a tyrant. Whichever position he settles on henceforth determines his character and his future attitude in relation to power issues, particularly at times of physical, or social stress. Of course most of us do also develop the more stable position: Im O.K., Youre O.K. As a less dramatic designation, the slave position can be called Type I- unsure, and the tyrant position, Type II- oversure. Type I are those people who seek strokes from an Im Not OK, Youre OK (-,+) position. They tend to transact with others from either a compliant or rebellious Child ego state, sometimes helpless, sometimes bratty. They seek strokes from people who impress them as having powerful Parent ego states, hoping that it is such people who can offer them a key to the riddle of existence. In everyday life they appear as victims or rebels. Conversely, Type II persons operate from the Im OK, Youre Not OK (+,-) defensive existential position, having resolved that no one can offer them any hope. Their only chance for survival in an uncertain world is to stamp it with their personal view of reality, to convince or force others to participate in their image of the world. So they operate as oversure acting helpful or bossy. They seek out partners or followers who will transact with them from a compliant Child ego state, will acknowledge them as Powerful Parents, and will thereby offer them validation for their grandiose illusion of being sure. They relate as rescuers but become persecutors when they dont obtain gratitude or compliance. Finally, they may end as victims. Both types have a way of finding each other, and up to a point this may be fine, because they can then indulge in complementary stroking to their hearts content, but if they are endowed with heavy rackets, calamity may follow. This is where the issue of rackets comes in. A few light rackets cause no harm, but heavy, persistent rackets mean that the person is not truly capable of dealing with his underlying emotions and lacks a solid sense of self. Therefore he is likely to be excessively needy and overly concerned about validating and reinforcing his defensive existential position. For it is by means of our defensive existential position that we ward off the despair that pushes to manifest itself as hopelessness in Type I persons, and murderous rage in Type II persons. By definition, persons with heavy or 3rd degree rackets, (that is: thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that lead to the destruction or confinement of body tissue) cannot stand awareness because they do not distinguish between feeling and the likelihood of behaving in unacceptable ways. It follows that, as a defense, they seek and receive strokes for unreal substitute feelings. As a result, they are never really gratified within themselves. Both the giving and receiving of strokes are artificially induced and receivedlike eating devitaminized food. This only exacerbates the hunger all the more, like drug addiction that falsely seems to energize while inducing starvation. So the seeds for mutually killing each other off are there from the beginning even while mutual stroking is taking place and temporarily appeases both parties. Although there is probably a fairly even distribution of both character types in the general population, when it comes to heavy racketeers there appear to be more slave types than tyrants. It looks as though there is a higher number of extreme Type I persons who continue to operate, even as grown-ups, with the belief, however illusory, that there is a way for them to bask in a paradise run by a Father or Mother figure. They seek to abdicate from the responsibility of sorting the welter of mutually contradictory attitudes and feelings in themselves and others. In most instances such yearnings remain manageable as fantasies or acceptable behavior. Usually they get played out in minor ways with more forceful partners. But there remain the unappeased yearnings to escape from freedom as described by Fromm in his book by this name. When such persons are offered the opportunity to be led into a haven of relief from anxiety this looks like an offer they cant refuse. At last: no more conflict or concern about ones inability to make difficult decisions. Heres a Powerful new Parent who can tell them exactly whats right and good and how they can belong. He seems to offer love and understanding for their craving. To merge with, to become one with him, as humble members of whatever community he sets up, seems like a happiness worth sacrificing for. Here come all my money, my relationship with former friends and family, my autonomy for you, Great Leader who can give me ultimate answers, who can make me feel good merely by believing in you, and therefore in the validity of what Im doing. It is this longing to escape from autonomous functioning that led so many people to embrace Nazism as the golden hope that would free them from disillusion. People are vulnerable to the enchantment of promises from persons such as Hitler or Jones. In childhood these people feel forsaken or overpowered in attempts to experience themselves as freestanding creatures and therefore substitute illusions and fantasies for disappointment. Before Fromm, Dostoyevsky used the Grand Inquisitor (Type II) to critically describe the Slave (Type I):So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship . . . Man is tormented by no greater desire than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which he is born. . Man prefers peace and even death to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil.Dostoyevsky also described how such people get themselves bound into a system, pointing out that:These pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but also to find something that all would believe in and worship; what is essential is that all may be together in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship theyve slain each other.In effect both Fromm and Dostoyevsky describe the need i n slave type persons for mutual racketeering with a great parent that dominates a community of adapted children seeking the same dogma and the same system of beliefs. Within this setting the slaves develop pseudo-intimacy by means of Child ego state transactions with each other. It is pseudo-intimacy because its maintained by their continued racketeering transactions with the Parent ego state of the powerful leader. Pro abortion EssayOne should remember that for a while, Jones rackets led him to make valuable social contributions. He fought racism, even to the point of adopting seven different children of different races, he supported some of his followers and various liberal causes, and he served effectively for the San Francisco Housing Authority. But as a result of his love and benevolence racket, he found himself pushed to dish out, and to dish out concern and love to others while becoming increasingly hungrier and frustrated from not getting what he truly needed. Whatever he received got deflected to his power hungry Parent rather than to his starving Child. Initially he may have experienced excitement, energy and creativity, but as time went on the abject, needy, rackety strokes from his followers failed to gratify his basic yearnings. It is no surprise that he was desperate about holding on to Tim Stoen, the 6-year old adopted child, when the latter was being claimed by his own parents. Tim may have been the source of the few genuine loving strokes Jones received. To reassure himself that he was not dying of depletion, and to boost his sure attitude, Jones increasingly was forced to depend on mass rallies, alcohol and pep pills. His emotional starvation created inaccurate assumptions about being beset with a variety of physical illnesses. This is a typical syndrome in tyrant types when their sense of sureness begins to falter. Trying to enforce more control over his followers, he moved from Benevolent Rescuer (his racket) to Persecutor. While still maintaining a sureracket of what was for the goodof his followers, he had eruptions of m urderous rage; increasingly he experienced himself as the Victim, even before the self-created calamity closed in on him. After increasing success in building up followers and admiration, persons like Jones set them toward destruction within the net of mutually shared magical beliefs in their community. They start out believing, as do their followers, that they can omni potently solve the worlds problems, if only people will do it their way. This was also Hitlers stated belief. And this may also be the tragedy of Dederich at Synanon, the one time effective treatment of heroin addiction, turned authoritarian community. When the magical process fails to succeed totally, frustration and anger in both leader and followers develop. Initially, both deny these, lest their airtight system explode the shared illusion of leaders omnipotence, and followers newfound effectiveness. Positive mutual stroking transforms it into negative stroking, particularly by the leaders on the followers who get blamed for everything that goes wrong. They in turn accept the blame rather than confront their leader. Where followers ch allenge or try to defect, the group literally or figuratively exterminates them. They continue to try to remain tightly knit in spite of the internal combustion that can cause implosion, or from explosion due to external intervention. So a given individual can get himself entrapped into a dangerously violent system through having a confused or frightened Child and even when his Adult is operational, he may be so enmeshed, it is too late to cry uncle. Then, his best apparent Adult option may be to go along and save his life or his relative sanity. These appear to be improved as long as he stays in the system and does not waste energy fighting. Typically, individuals like Jones have a talent for distorting and converting ideas like freedom, responsibility, self-respect, caring, and love. These ideas get co-opted into representing rackets rather than into representing profound meanings. In hearing such leaders, it is sometimes difficult to identify exactly how their lofty justifications dont ring true. Surrender and trust, beautiful in a loving relationship, become capitulation of a free child to the grandiosity racket of a misguided parent. This sad phenomenon can be witnessed in certain couples relationships, families, religious or psychological movements and, more tragically, in communities such as Synanon and Jonestown. Commenting on Synanon, Max Lerner identified the seed of tragedy as lying in the surrender of individual choice both to the leaders decision and to the groups pressures. If an individual allows himself to be stripped naked within such a setting, then he inevitably becomes dependent on the leader and the group for psychological support. Concluding, Lerner states: We have still to resolve the mixture of authority and self help that is best for therapy and religion. But until we do, the Buddhas remark on his deathbed may be worth recalling: Work out your own salvation with diligence. In hearing of the deaths in Guyana, Rabbi Maurice Davis, who had sold Jones an synagogue within which was housed the first Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, said: I keep thinking what happens when the power of love is twisted into the love of power. Bibliography:Dostoyevsky, F. The grand inquisitor. The Brothers Karamazov, Book V, Chapter 5, New York: Signet Classics, published by the New American Library, Inc., 1957. English, F. The substitution factor: Rackets and real feelings. Transactional Analysis Journal, 1971, 1(4), Part I. English, F. The substitution factor: Rackets and real feelings. Transactional Analysis Journal, 1972, 1(1), Part II. English, F. Im OK Youre OK for real. Voices, 1976, 12(7). English, F. Im OK Youre OK Adult. Transactional Analysis Journal, 1975, 5(4). English, F. Rackets and racketeering as the root of games. In Roger N. Blakeney (Ed.),Current Issues in Transactional Analysis, New York: Bruner Mazel, 1977. English, F. Episcript and the hot potato game. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 1969, 8(32). English, F. What makes a good therapist? Transactional Analysis Journal, 1977, 7(2). Fromm, E. Escape from Freedom. New York: Holt, Reinehart and Winston, 1976. Kilduff, M., Javers, R. The suicide cult. New York: Bantam Books, 1978. Krause, C.A., Washington Post Staff. Guyana massacre. New York: Berkeley Publishing Co. 1978. Lerner M. Dominance: Bonds of an encounter group. Newspaper column syndicated, Dec. 1978.