Masse And Group Attitudes

Many mental-health professionals have voiced the opinion that Donald Trump exhibits symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). A Change.org petition posted on January 26, 2017 by Baltimore psychologist John Gartner urging Trump’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office received 60,000 signatures by October 2017. Gartner told the Baltimore Sun that he believed Trump was a “malignant narcissist.” In a 2015 Vanity Fair article several mental-health professionals had agreed that Trump appeared to present symptoms of NPD, but Harvard’s Howard Gardner identified what for him was a more serious problem. “For me,” he told Vanity Fair, “the compelling question is the psychological state of his supporters.”

Otto Kernberg, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City wrote an article for Psychoanalytic Quarterly in 2020 titled “Malignant Narcissism and Large Group Regression.” (Kernberg 2020)

The term malignant narcissism was first used by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in 1964, calling it a “severe mental sickness” that was the “quintessence of evil.” Malignant narcissism is now regarded as a combination of traits from narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder.

Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy.

Individuals with this disorder have a grandiose sense of self-importance. They routinely overestimate their abilities and inflate their accomplishments, often appearing boastful and pretentious. Often implicit in the inflated judgments of their own accomplishments is an underestimation (devaluation) of the contributions of others. They may feel that they can only be understood by, and should only associate with, other people who are special or of high status and may attribute “unique,” “perfect,” or “gifted” qualities to those with whom they associate. Individuals with this disorder believe that their needs are special and beyond the ken of ordinary people. Their own self-esteem is enhanced (i.e., “mirrored”) by the idealized value that they assign to those with whom they associate. While individuals with this disorder generally require excessive admiration, their self-esteem is almost invariably very fragile. A sense of entitlement, combined with a lack of sensitivity to the wants and needs of others, may result in the conscious or unwitting exploitation of others. Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder generally have a lack of empathy and have difficulty recognizing the desires, subjective experiences, and feelings of others. They tend to discuss their own concerns in inappropriate and lengthy detail, while failing to recognize that others also have feelings and needs. They are often contemptuous and impatient with others who talk about their own problems and concerns. These individuals may be oblivious to the hurt their remarks may inflict. These individuals are often envious of others or believe that others are envious of them. Arrogant, haughty behaviors characterize these individuals. On the other hand, vulnerability in self-esteem makes individuals with narcissistic personality disorder very sensitive to “injury” from criticism or defeat. They may react with disdain, rage, or defiant counterattack. (Shafti 2019)

The term “antisocial personality” was introduced in 1968 in the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM II). This pattern of behavior is also referred to as psychopathy.

Individuals with antisocial personality disorder fail to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior. They may repeatedly perform acts that are grounds for arrest (whether they are arrested or not), such as destroying property, harassing others, stealing, or pursuing illegal occupations. Persons with this disorder disregard the wishes, rights, or feelings of others. They are frequently deceitful and manipulative in order to gain personal profit or pleasure. They may repeatedly lie, use an alias, con others, or malinger. A pattern of impulsivity may be manifested by a failure to plan ahead. Individuals with antisocial personality disorder tend to be irritable and aggressive…. These individuals also display a reckless disregard for the safety of themselves or others. They may engage in sexual behavior or substance use that has a high risk for harmful consequences. Individuals with antisocial personality disorder also tend to be consistently and extremely irresponsible, including financial irresponsibility and show little remorse for the consequences of their acts. Psychopaths frequently lack empathy and tend to be callous, cynical, and contemptuous of the feelings, rights, and sufferings of others. They may have an inflated and arrogant self-appraisal and may be excessively opinionated, self-assured, or cocky. Lack of empathy, inflated self-appraisal, and superficial charm are features that have been commonly included in traditional conceptions of psychopathy that may be particularly distinguishing of the disorder. (Shafti 2019)

Kernberg begins his discussion of large group regression with reference to Freud’s term Masse, which is what is translated as “group” in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. A footnote to James Strachey’s translation of Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse explains that Freud’s use of Masse includes William McDougall’s concept of “group mind,” and Gustave Le Bon’s foule usually translated as crowd (Freud 1922). Freud quotes Le Bon:

The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from those possessed by each of the cells singly. (Le Bon 1920)

Freud goes on to highlight particularly three characteristics of individual behavior that Le Bon identifies within a group:

• The first he calls a “sentiment of invincible power,” adding that  “... the sentiment of responsibility which always controls individuals disappears entirely.”
• The second he calls “contagion.” Exhibiting behavior that Le Bon calls “contrary to his nature,” “an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest.”
• The third Le Bon calls “suggestibility,” which he compares to the behavior of someone who is hypnotized, except that in a group the suggestion gains what Le Bon calls “impetuosity,” because it is shared by the many members of the group.

Of the members of the Masse Kernberg observes: “It is their mutual identification that coincides with their identification with the leader of the mass movement, which provides them with a sense of shared identity, an identification with the leader who is not only powerful and idealized, but also feared.” Individuals under the influence of mass psychology, says Kernberg, project onto the leader their own image of the person they want to be (Freud’s “ego ideal”), leaving the individual “free from moral constraints.”

Kernberg discusses the work of two more recent researchers into group psychology. Walter Bion served as a tank commander in World War I, and a psychiatrist in military hospitals in World War II. His 1961 study Experiences in Groups recounts his analyses of groups of 10 to 15 members that met for sessions of 1 to 2 hours, and were “exclusively engaged in observing their own experiences and behavior.” Bion finds that in the absence of specific tasks for the group, what he calls “basic assumptions” emerge.

The first basic assumption he terms “dependency,” which Kernberg describes as “characterized by a general sense of insecurity, uncertainty, and immaturity.” A group dealing with the dependency basic assumption will seek a leader “who presents self-assurance and an attitude of potency and knowledge that is supporting and reassuring.” If such a leader emerges, competition can arise within the group to be the preferred “child” of the leader, and the leader provides “a sense of safety and security in being part of the group.” If a leader can’t meet the dependency needs, the group will look for another leader who exhibits the attributes they thought they had found in the first.

The second variety of basic assumption Bion terms “fight-flight.” In contrast to the dependency group, a fight-flight group is riven with “tension and conflict.” The fight-flight group may experience its group unity in opposition to external groups, or may split into an “in-group” faction that identifies with the leader, and an “out-group” that fights them. Kernberg describes a “splitting” that occurs in a fight-flight group.

Splitting, projective identification, and denial of aggression within the internal subgroup go hand in hand with the search for a leader who will gratify the need for this organization, usually a powerful individual with paranoid features who fits the group’s demand for a sharp division between the ideal inner world of the group, and a dangerous threatening external world that needs to be fought off. (Kernberg 2020)

A third kind of basic assumption group is termed “pairing.” Unlike the two previous types of group, the pairing group is focused on a heterosexual or homosexual couple that the group admires. The admiration of the group is two-sided, representing both the wish among group members to establish such a partnership for themselves, but also “the related need to fight off envious feelings about this selected ideal couple.” The leader of the pairing group accepts and protects the selected couple, and helps assure the group that the erotic character of relations within the group is accepted as well.

Kernberg next cites somewhat more recent work – Pierre Turquet’s 1975 essay “Threats to identity in the large group.” In the study, groups of 100 to 300 met, typically seated in concentric circles, and with no particular agenda other than “to experience and discuss its own developments.” In such groups Turquet observes “an enormous sense of loss of personal identity, as the individual in it cannot reliably find a commonality with anybody else.” Efforts to establish subgroups based on common characteristics such as “needs, language, religion, profession, political views…,” etc. “usually fail and the group develops rapidly a collective sense of intense anxiety.”  (Turquet 2019)

Turquet finds a tendency of members of such groups not to pay attention to what others were saying, and those who do speak receive no feedback. “There is a general sense of impotence and fearfulness that develops in the members, and a fear of aggression to explode in the group.” Subgroups identified within or outside the large group may be subjects of intense hatred, which can temporarily unify the large group as it “fights an external enemy,” but “such efforts usually fail.” Attempts at rational analysis of the group from within are “shut down immediately.” Individuals selected as leaders of such large groups tend to be those who make cliche-ridden simplistic statements. The group adopts a somewhat inconsistent attitude toward these people, supporting them with a “slightly derogatory, amused attitude,” and at the same time “a shared sense of relief.” “…[T]here is support of a mediocre leadership that reassures everybody and provides a calming sense of security while at the same time there is a shared subtle devaluation of that selected leader.”

If the group grows particularly anxious or aggressive, it can devolve into paranoia, and select a leader who identifies something in the external world that the group agrees needs to be fought and destroyed. Characterizing Turquet, Kernberg writes:

Thus, the large group, at the bottom, oscillates between the search for a narcissistic leader with a nonthreatening, simplistic quality that can be depreciated and promises a tranquilizing passivity, or else, under activation of an excessive degree of aggression, a powerful paranoid leader who unifies the group into a fighting attitude…. (Kernberg 2020)

Next Kernberg cites the work of Vamik Volkan, whose research and experience focuses on “naturally occurring groups,” notably including effects of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in New York City. Volkan is credited with originating the term “large group regression.” In his book Blind Trust  Volkan writes that individual regression “involves a return to some of the psychological expectations, wishes, fears, and associated mental defense mechanisms of an earlier state of human development." But large groups can also regress when “a group’s realistic efforts to feel secure merge with expressions of human nature under stress, and … reality and fantasy become blurred.” Volkan lists 20 signs or symptoms of large group regression:

1. Group members lose their individuality.
2. The group rallies blindly around the leader.
3. The group becomes divided into “good” segments – those who obediently follow the leader– and “bad” – those perceived to oppose the leader.
4. The group creates a sharp “us” and “them” division between itself and “enemy” (usually neighboring) groups.
5. The group’s shared morality or belief system becomes increasingly absolutist and punitive toward those perceived to be in conflict with it.
6. The group uses extensive “taking in” (introjection) and “putting out” (projection) mechanisms and may experience mood swings, from shared depressive feelings to collective paranoid expectations.
7. The group feels “entitled” to do anything to maintain its shared identity.
8. Group members experience increased magical thinking and reality-blurring.
9. The group experiences new cultural phenomena or adopts modified versions of traditional societal customs that are intended to protect the group identity.
10. The group’s chosen traumas and glories are reactivated, resulting in a time collapse.
11. The leadership creates a break in the historical continuity of the group and fills the gap with elements such as: “new” nationalism, ethnic sentiments, religious fundamentalism or ideology, accompanying “new” morality, and sometimes a “new” history of the group purged of unwanted elements.
12. Group members begin to experience some of the group’s shared symbols as protosymbols
13. Shared images depict and dehumanize enemy groups with symbols or protosymbols associated with progressively more subhuman traits: demons, insects, germs, human waste.
14. The group experiences geographical or legal boundaries as a “second skin.”
15. The group focuses on minor differences between itself and enemy groups.
16. The leadership ruins basic trust within the family and creates a new kind of family hierarchy and morality that interferes with roles within the family (especially women’s roles), with normal childhood development, and with the adolescent passage.
17. Group members become overly concerned with the notion of “blood” and an associated homogeneous or purified existence.
18. The group engages in behaviors symbolizing purification.
19. Group taste has difficulty differentiating what is beautiful from what is ugly.
20. The group turns its physical environment into a gray-brown amorphous (symbolically fecal) structure. (Volkan 2004)

Kernberg identifies commonalities in the varieties of group regression. In all cases, he asserts, the motive for group regression is “a loss of the functional relationship of individuals within a stable, small or large social, and cultural structure.” Normal identity function, he suggests, “is supported and assured by the individual’s psychosocial environment,” and loss of the traditional social structure constitutes a threat to that identity. Loss of this environment can affect a group or community, leading to “powerful anxiety,” and triggering regression.

In a dependency or fight-flight group described above, the anxiety has features in common with what psychologist Melanie Klein identified as the “paranoid schizoid position.” Paranoid schizoid position refers to the array of anxieties, defenses, and relationship to persons, things, and activities in their external environment (object relations). As noted above, this includes splitting – seeing oneself or others as all good or all bad, projective identification, and denial, but also idealization and devaluation, and omnipotent control. Most of the individuals in the group will search for a new identity that is “linked to the dependency of a particular type of leadership.” Kernberg suggests that leadership of mass movements will likely oscillate between  the narcissistic type described in connection with a dependency group, and the paranoid type described in connection with the heightened anxiety seen in a fight/flight group.

Kernberg alludes to an earlier description of leaders of social movements in which he identified: ability to orient the organization in the context of his/her vision of the future; capacity for self-reflection, and assessment of other particularly in the context of delegation; a capacity to avoid what he calls the “corruptive temptations of leadership”; some narcissistic traits that in moderation can help navigate ambiguities in and challenges to the organization; some paranoid traits that help the leader recognize actual threats to the organization. It is the latter two attributes which if they appear in “exaggerated and pathological” form “characterize the leaders selected in regressive group situations, problematic organizational functioning, and mass movements.”

In what Kernberg calls “organized social institutions,” such as education, health, military, religious, or industrial organizations, individuals with some symptoms of malignant narcissism may be able to function more-or-less effectively, often by identifying “their personal interests with that of the institution.” They may surround themselves with “adulating subordinates,” thus limiting feedback and evaluation of the organization. In such an organization, Kernberg notes, the most capable staff members are likely to be found at the bottom of the organizational ladder, “depressed and alienated,” and among the first employees to leave the organization, depriving it of “the most productive and creative” staffers.

In an organization suffering from large group regression, the malignant narcissist leader’s inflated self-assurance provides reassurance to the members in the face of their loss of individuality, as they identify with the leader – what Volkan calls a “second skin.”  Simplistic slogans enable group members to feel that they grok the leader’s thinking. Kernberg:

The well rationalized aggression against out groups is fostered by the leader’s direct, crude, and sadistic expression of animosity against such out groups, devaluing and dehumanizing them while declaring the large group he directs to be the selected, ideal, morally justified, superior social group. Aggressive outbursts against minorities is fostered, welcome, considered heroic and morally admirable, so that freedom to express destructive behavior excites the group and creates a contaminating festive atmosphere. (Kernberg 2020)

Such leaders will deny dishonesty even when it has essentially been displayed in public. Kernberg cites Hitler’s never admitting publicly his orders to eliminate rivals in the military or initiate the mass murder of Jews. The leader’s dishonesty, readily apparent to outside observers, is perceived by members within the large group as taking a daring, courageous stand against convention. With the leader taking on moral responsibility for the group, members feel free from “moral constraints,” free to enjoy sadistic behavior toward “enemies.”

Whereas a leader with malignant narcissistic tendencies in an organized social institution is to some extent reined in by the organization's structure and so can function in the “outside world,” in a regressed large group the effect is much more destructive. The feelings of insecurity among members of the large group create an opening for a politician who can take the group’s insecurities and anxieties on him/herself, and lead the group against a perceived external “enemy.” The group coalesces around the tasks of identifying and separating from the “enemy” group. The leader may invoke resonance with historical precedent, comprising both past trauma suffered by the group, but also past glory. Kernberg:

The aggressive, paranoid, and dishonest behavior socially fostered by malignant narcissistic leadership thus evolves into an ever-growing sense of self-confirmation and power by the group. The self-assuredness of the leader and the expansion of his paranoid, grandiose, and aggressive behavior go hand in hand with the increase of a sense of power, freedom, violent behavior, and triumphant excitement of the regressed large group. (Kernberg 2020)

French historian Jacques Semelin chronicled the progression of anti-Semitism in Germany in the Hitler era, from what began as “work restrictions, and media attacks,” and progressed through increased physical violence and appropriation of Jewish property. At this stage of group development, Kernberg notes, social structures such as religious organizations, armed forces, media, and even bureaucracy, could either constrain or reinforce the group behavior. For example, the Soviet military broke with the communist party at the time the Soviet economic system was collapsing, thus accelerating the fall of the communist regime. By contrast, in the Hitler era the German military endorsed Nazi ideology and was key to German domination of Europe.

From its origins as Donald Trump’s appropriation of Ronald Reagan’s slogan in 2017, to its application to Trump supporters from the Charlottesville white supremacist rally that year to the attack on the capitol in 2021, "Make America Great Again,” or MAGA has signified large group regression in the Trump era. Below we include a few recent examples with context.

In a recent article in Salon about a ridiculous MAGA online post involving Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz’s Labrador retriever, Amanda Marcotte invokes German historian and political theorist Hannah Arendt’s massive work The Origins of Totalitarianism. Marcotte quotes from Arendt’s section on propaganda in the chapter on “Totalitarian Movement,” which describes both the Nazi SA and the communist party (Bolsheviks) in Russia. Expanding Marcotte’s selection somewhat:

A mixture of gullibility and cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. (Arendt 1951)

The poster Marcotte is writing about cited a video of Walz with another dog and tried to suggest that Walz had presented this other dog as his Labrador. As Marcotte writes, the lie “borders on the psychotic,” but the lie itself is not the point. The incident has features in common with Kernberg’s discussion of dishonest behavior within large regression groups, where it is perceived as a courageous stand against convention. Marcotte invoking Arendt again::

The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness. (Arendt 1951)

Marcotte echoes Kernberg in noting that “Trump and his co-conspirators,” convince the members of the regressed group that they understand the leaders’ thinking, or as Marcotte puts it “are in on the hustle.” Trump maintains control over his followers by asserting

…[T]hat better things are not possible, hate and anger are the only "real" emotions, and politics can only ever be used to inflict pain on others, not to uplift people. It's a dark and depressing worldview, and it's spreading rapidly, aided by authoritarian propaganda that assures the MAGA masses that anything appealing about Democrats must be "fake."  (Marcotte 2024)

Writing in New Lines magazine, psychologist Dan P. McAdams describes Trump’s supporters’ attitudes in terms similar to those Kernberg cites from Tourquet – finding comfort and reassurance in the leader’s “simplistic” statements, while at the same time expressing a “shared subtle devaluation.” In McAdams view Trump is seen by his followers as both more and less than human. As an example he enumerates Trump’s serial philandering, pursuit of wealth, absence of “charitable instincts,” and lack of familiarity with Christianity, but notes he is nonetheless supported by 84% of white so-called “evangelical” Christians. McAdams quotes New Jersey preacher Jonathan Cahn comparing Trump to the Old Testament figure Jehu, who helped overthrow the idolatry of Baal. Cahn sees Trump as a “'flawed vessel’ who is being used by God for purposes that go well beyond Trump’s own comprehension.” (McAdams 2024)

Researchers at Carolina State and Virginia Commonwealth Universities identified several of Volkan’s large group regression symptoms in the US electorate. (Behler, et al. 2021). Using data from approximately one year after the 2016 election, the study examines “national nostalgia,” loosely characterized as “a reverie for the country’s good old days.”

National nostalgia is one type of collective nostalgia that is felt while self-categorizing as a citizen of a specific country, and is likely to be associated with particular intra- and intergroup attitudes and behavioral intentions. Just as personal nostalgia during times of change and upheaval can facilitate coping (e.g., attenuating loneliness). (Behler et al. 2021)

This description can be seen to have features in common with Volkan’s group characteristics of identifying with traditional behavior as a way of protecting group identity, and experiencing a “time collapse” in which a group bases its current identity on past grievances and glories.

Behler et al. find:

Higher levels of national nostalgia predicted both positive attitudes toward [former] President Trump and racial prejudice…. National nostalgia most strongly predicted positive attitudes toward president Trump among those high in racial prejudice. (Behler et al. 2021)

Political scientist and commentator Jonathan Bernstein’s analysis of Trump’s recent filming of a campaign commercial at Arlington National Cemetery highlights several aspects of what has been discussed here. Trump and MAGA perception of their “in-group” status was on display as he and his campaign staff ignored laws prohibiting political activities in Section 60 of the cemetery where troops are buried, and recorded videos to be used in advertisements. But a darker trait of regressed groups was evident as well, which Bernstein highlights. A woman who is on the cemetery staff was bullied and physically accosted, but declined to press charges out of fear of retaliation. This of course aligns with several of Volkan’s regressed group traits, perhaps especially the group’s belief system becoming “absolutist” with the group becoming “punitive toward those perceived to be in conflict with it.” (Bernstein 2024)

Finally, with a flicker of possible hope, a study of antidemocratic attitudes in the American public, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the general public of both parties rejected antidemocratic behavior:

While American political elites increasingly exhibit an antidemocratic posture, our analysis of public attitudes reveals a clear democratic disconnect: Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly and consistently oppose norm violations and partisan violence–even when their own representatives engage in antidemocratic actions. This commitment to democratic norms remains stable over time in both cross-sectional and panel data, suggesting that recent outbreaks of antidemocratic behavior on the part of political elites have yet to weaken the public’s support for democracy. (Holliday et al. 2024)

The paper begins with the ominous statements that “There is general agreement that American democracy is under threat,” noting that “prominent” Republican politicians were part of the effort to overthrow the 2020 election, and that many Republican-controlled legislatures were enacting “policy agendas associated with democratic backsliding.” Possibly for the appearance of completeness the report also mentions two short-lived refusals by Democratic party candidates to accept election results.

Encouragingly the study finds that “overwhelming majorities” of both parties opposed what the researchers termed “norm violations,” such as censoring partisan media, or opposing court decisions that run counter to party policy. And the study found essentially no support for political violence.

Noting, however that one of the least supported norm violations – “removing polling places in outparty dominated areas” – has already been implemented in Texas, the report concludes:

More ominous implications of our results are that 1) public support is not a necessary precondition for backsliding behavior by elites, and 2) Americans, despite their distaste for norm violations, continue to elect representatives whose policies and actions threaten democracy. (Holliday et al. 2024)