PREFACE
Otto Kernberg’s “Ideology, Conflict and Leadership in Groups and Organizations” (1998), is a masterpiece of Freudian analysis of Mass Psychology. This work provides the intellectual framework of this article. I have augmented sections of this synopsis with ideas extracted from Herbert Marcuse’s “Eros and Civilization” and “One-Dimensional Man”, Wilhelm Reich’s “Mass Psychology of Fascism”, and R.D. Laing’s “The Politics of Experience.”
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BACKGROUND
Sigmund Freud’s view of human psychology divides the personality into three interacting components: the id (instinctive desires demanding immediate gratification), the superego (the moral conscience which embodies societal norms, rules and prohibitions) and the ego which seeks to balance these drives.
In “Civilization and Its Discontents” (1930) Freud argues that human unhappiness stems from the conflict between individual instinctual drives (libido / aggression) and civilization’s demands for repression, which forces conformity for security. Civilization requires denying instincts which causes unhappiness but is regarded as a necessary compromise – “the pleasure principle” is thus superseded by “the reality principle.”
Herbert Marcuse argues that the reality principle has been perverted by capitalism into what he calls “the performance principle” which further negates libido, regarded by Marcuse as life affirming. Marcuse argues that under Capital’s “logic of domination” the individual exists as a thing, a reified entity whose sole purpose is to serve the State. Sexual activity is confined to the genitals in order to produce more workers and soldiers. Conformity is rewarded with the “gadgets of affluence”, technology that further entraps the individual.
“The performance principle, which is that of an acquisitive and antagonistic society in the process of constant expansion, presupposes a long development during which domination has been increasingly rationalized…”
— Herbert Marcuse
The end result is the individual has become “one-dimensional”, speaking in internalized cliches and seeing the world as a hostile and empty place. Marcuse also argues that the individual has internalized the belief that Capital is the be-all and end-all, the highest possible point of human societal development. This ideology – there’s no way like the American Way – is seen as “reality” rather than a belief system, rather than as an ideology. But the repression of libido causes psychic distress and unhappiness often to the point of longing for death. Many who embrace the internalized ideology, at least superficially, seek relief from frustration and despair.
Right wing populist, e.g. authoritarian, leaders promise change, promise a unified community, a Volksgemeinschaft that excludes a scapegoated minority and facilitates a return to (a largely mythical) “greatness.” The scapegoat can be a group of individuals (racial or religious) or a nation state. In the latter case war is often the outcome. The out group is said to be victims of a false consciousness, an ideology. Marcuse argues that every group has an ideology but victims of the performance principle deny this for their group…they alone see what they call reality.
Why do people blindly follow authoritarians? Kernberg argues that they escape from the repression the superego enforces by “projecting their superego” onto an idealized leader.
MASS PSYCHOLOGY
Renowned psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg argues that subordinate members of a group or organization feel relieved of responsibility by projecting their ego ideal (superego) onto a group leader. This allows the group to “follow the idealized leader [ of the mob ] blindly, as described by Freud”, which “reconstitutes a sort of identity by identification with the leader, protects the individual from intragroup aggression by this common identity and the shared projection of aggression to external enemies, and gratifies dependency needs through submission to the leader.” According to Kernberg, regression is inherent in the group process, the mob being the most exaggerated form. This dynamic was evident in Germany’s National Socialist period and today in the US with the MAGA movement.
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
— Donald Trump
Kernberg argues that regression in groups is omnipresent, as described in Freud’s studies of ‘mass psychology’. While the regression is most severe in the unstructured mob (gangs, lynch mobs, etc.) it is present in any group where the individual’s identity, moral code, ethical imperatives, etc., are diminished due to projection of the ego ideal (or superego / sense of personal responsibility) onto the idealized leader.
“The group becomes a machine and that it is a man-made machine in which the machine is the very men who make
it is forgotten.” — R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience
IDEOLOGY
“The social value of the individual is measured primarily in terms of standardized skills and qualities of adjustment rather than autonomous judgment and personal responsibility.”
— Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization
The glue that holds every group together is ideology. In the case of an authoritarian movement the ideology is provided by a leader who offers simplistic solutions, scapegoats and soothing, conventional cliches.
National Socialists were very conspicuous for their skillfulness in operating upon the emotions of the individuals – avoiding relevant arguments as much as possible.
— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
Even when an authoritarian structure appears benign, the leader imbues followers with a group ideology that often reduces thought to cliche and demands conformity. What’s more the benign structure is not necessarily static: “The ever-present dangers of ideological regression and bureaucratic sadism cannot be overestimated.” (Kernberg)
Marcuse defined ideology as “Officially desired and advertised attitudes.” He also pointed out that most Americans believe they don’t have an ideology. The US is the “Land of the Free” where citizens are regarded as consumers and commodities first and foremost but view this as the natural order of things. Any other viewpoint is regarded as alien – and simply wrong. The State rewards “one-dimensional thought” (conformity and non-critical thinking) with a relative affluence and the “gadgets of affluence.” Technology is used as a form of social control. People will sleep on the sidewalk in order to obtain a new iPhone but will not join a protest to stop an unjust war or to demand healthcare.
One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information.
— Herbert
Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
Ideology is the glue but what is the ultimate outcome? Reich calls it “national narcissism.” “There’s no way like the American Way” was a popular slogan in 1937. It is still accepted as fact.
This inclination to identify [ as a group member ] is the psychological basis of national narcissism.
— Wilhelm Reich, The
Mass Psychology of Fascism
And national narcissism is a fertile breeding ground for authoritarianism.
SURPLUS AGGRESSION
In any group the phenomenon of “activated mass psychology” — projection of the ego ideal — grants the leader quite a bit of power over the group and its members. This idealization corrupts its object: “When socially determined excess of power is vested in the leadership, or a historically determined excessive power vested in the leadership transforms functional authority into authoritarian power, the conditions are ripe for misuse of such power in the discharge of surplus aggression, which can have a paranoiagenic effect.” (Kernberg)
Surplus aggression refers to heightened, often violent behaviour which can be driven by social constructions of masculinity, economic opportunity (or lack thereof) and political structures.
“Paranoiagenic” refers to the theories of Elliott Jacques, adapted by Kernberg. Jacques (1976) described two types of organizations: requisite (where authority and accountability are matched) and paranoiagenic. Paranoiagenesis is an organizational process (of regression) characterized by fear, mistrust and hyper-alertness. It results from the development of an unsound administrative structure. According to A. Kenneth Rice, regressive group processes triggered by unsound authoritarian structures or leadership produce an “institutional paranoid group” reaction.
In an authoritarian, paranoid, environment surplus aggression can be channeled into acts of violence one of which is bureaucratic sadism.
BUREAUCRATIC SADISM
Bureaucratic sadism is the intentional infliction of psychological pain and humiliation through the rigid and arbitrary application of rules and regulations. It is a phenomenon associated with psychopathy and narcissism. It can also be associated with Borderline Personality disordered individuals who “split.” Splitting involves seeing only black and white, no shades of grey. And what is black one day can be white the next and vice versa. An authoritarian leader deprived of narcississtic supply by a subordinate may regard the previously esteemed subordinate as a threat (to ego) and respond with bureaucratic sadism.
Kernberg argues that authoritarian structures tend to abuse their power, discharging surplus aggression and indulging their bureaucratic sadism. Often the idealized, authoritarian, leader remains in control because it is not recognized that the problems generated by authoritarian actions and environments originate with the leader.
Kernberg’s group theory builds on the work of Wilfred Bion, who theorized that most groups fall into three categories: ‘pairing’, ‘dependency’ or ‘fight-flight’. While the “pairing” group is relatively functional and non-paranoid although it is utopian in that it presupposes that two “paired” members or a paired member and idea will provide security through group identity and ideology, Kernberg argues that dependency based groups seek a calming, narcissistic, reassuring mediocrity for a leader, what psychoanalysts Didier Anzieu and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel described as a pseudopaternal “MERCHANT OF ILLUSIONS” — a vendor of ideology composed of “conventional cliches” (Kernberg). The pairing group fails to address pressing issues because of its culture of hope. The dependency group can become a “fight-flight” group due to regression that can originate with the narcissistic leader – or the group itself.
Regarding the Merchant of Illusions, Wilhelm Reich argued that “It is in the nature of a political party that it does not orient itself in terms of truth, but in terms of illusions, which usually correspond to the irrational structure of the masses…Social leadership consolidates regression if it: tries to pass off the regression as progress, proclaims itself to be the savior of the world, and shoots those who remind it of its duties.”
According to Kernberg: “primitive idealization, projected omnipotence, denial, envy, and greed, together with their accompanying defenses, characterize the basic dependency group. These groups are conventional, ideologically simplistic, conformist, and able to indulge themselves without guilt or gratitude; they lack a sense of personal responsibility or a deep investment in others.”
Describing the paranoid mindset of the fight-flight group, Kernberg states that “The second basic-assumptions group operates under a “fight-flight” assumption, united against what it vaguely perceives to be external enemies. This group expects the leader to direct the fight against such enemies.
The dependency group can become a fight-flight group when group regression triggers regression in the leader (prompting a “sudden exertion of authority” — authoritarian acts) which can contribute to a paranoid environment in which the fight-flight group flourishes.
INSTITUTIONALIZED DEHUMANIZATION
Projection of aggression onto an external enemy often results in institutionalized dehumanization of the out-group, providing the in-group with a cohesive force. Institutionalized dehumanization is a technique of control, whether orchestrated or unconscious, that is effective in keeping the authoritarian leader in power. The most extreme example would be a genocidal situation in a nation-state.
The Nazis used Jews as a scapegoat, an “external enemy”, MAGA targets migrants who are often selected for arrest based on skin colour and presumed national origin, people characterized by Trump as “murderers and rapists.” Bureaucratic sadism is evident in both instances. While more extreme in Nazi Germany, the Trump administration’s sending of arrestees to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, without any semblance of due process, is another example of bureaucratic sadism. The conditions at the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida were overtly sadistic which resulted in rare public outrage and the closure of the facility, likely because it was on US soil..
Authoritarisn control of a group is also facilitated by what Kernberg calls PSEUDOHUMANIZATION. Kernberg argues that leadership devoid of moral justification is based primarily on power: members are controlled by manipulation and “pseudohumanization” of the interpersonal relationships and working conditions — individual moral imperatives are redefined in service to the group. For example, the value of a group member is measured by performance alone. In a situation where pseudohumanization exists (e.g. where an authoritarian administration coexists with paranoid group regression) the performance evaluation supersedes individual values / belief systems in the mind of the member. This complements the elimination of personal responsibility accomplished by projecting the superego onto the leader.
Stanley Milgram’s classic Obedience to Authority experiments demonstrated how pseudohumanization could be induced in ordinary citizens by having an individual in a white lab coat tell them to continue administering electrical shocks to a unresponsive test subject by simply saying “the experiement requires that you continue” and “treat no response as an incorrect response.”
An infamous example of the subordinate as sociopath is Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who was the chief architect of the Holocaust and whose greatest regret is that he never got promoted to Standartenführer (full Colonel). He was quoted by Hannah Arendt (Eichmann In Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil) as apologizing to the Israeli court for his poor German with: “Amtssprache ist meine einzige Sprache.” (I only
speak bureaucratese.)
OF SERVITUDE AND SADISM
“This is the pure form of servitude: to exist as an instrument, as a thing.”
— Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
Narcissistic leaders also tend to hamper the efforts of effective subordinates, sometimes by design: “The more severe the leader’s personality pathology and the tighter the organizational structure, the greater the destructive effects of the leader on the organization. The reduction in the authority of functional leadership reduces the clarity of task systems, [ and ] weakens leadership functions throughout the organization.” (Kernberg)
Pardoxically, despite the desire to avoid the appearance of failure(s), the authoritarian leader will protect select incompetent subordinates, especially sycophants and yes-men: “At times strong and authoritarian, even sadistic, leaders have shown a weakness for an incompetent subordinate even while acknowledging his failings. There may even be an undertone of satisfaction (or moral self-congratulation) in the tolerance of this person in the face of complaints about his incompetence.”
Of course non-compliant subordinates, or those who fail to flatter, may be dismissed or become part of an out-group.
Some “groups may become intolerant of individuals, establishing a group dictatorship that acquires characteristics of a primitive morality and fosters the leadership of narcissistic and antisocial personalities.” (Kernberg)
NARCISSISTIC LEADERS
“Any group, small or large, tends to select leaders who represent not the paternal aspects of the prohibitive superego but a pseudopaternal merchant of illusions. A leader of this kind provides the group with an ideology, a unifying system of ideas; in this case, the ideology is the group as a primitive ego ideal, basically, the small or large group members’ identification with one another permits them to experience a primitive narcissistic gratification of greatness and power.” (Kernberg)
“Of all the character pathologies of leaders that endanger institutions, narcissistic personality features are perhaps the most serious. I must stress that I am using the concept of narcissistic personality here in a restrictive sense, referring to persons whose interpersonal relations are characterized by excessive self-reference and self-centeredness; whose grandiosity and overvaluation of themselves exist together with feelings of inferiority; who are overdependent on external admiration, emotionally shallow, intensely envious, and both disparaging and exploitative in their relations with others.” (ibid)
“The narcissistic leader’s aspirations center around primitive power over others, the desire for admiration, even awe, and the wish to be admired for personal attractiveness, charm, and brilliance, rather than for mature human qualities, moral integrity, or creative leadership…Since narcissistic leaders tend to surround themselves with yes men and shrewd manipulators who exploit their narcissistic needs, more honest and therefore critical members of the staff are pushed aside.” (ibid)
“The inability to form mature judgments about people and the reliance on sycophants reinforce each other and can lead to to a situation in which the narcisstic leader is surrounded by people similar to himself, people suffering from other serious behavior disorders or cynically exploiting their awareness of his psychological needs.” (ibid)
MALIGNANT NARCISSISM
“The most extreme form of paranoiagenic leadership is represented by leaders whose personality is characterized by malignant narcissism — that is a narcissistic personality combined with ego-syntonic sadism, paranoid tendencies, and antisocial features.” (ibid)
The end result of malignant narcissism in authoritarian leaders is often war. Historically, it starts with the oppression of an out-group. But if an out-group can be expanded to include an external enemy war will provide narcissistic supply to the leader and distract from other issues (e.g. the Epstein sex trafficking scandal). Trump’s attacks on Venezuela and Iran appear irrational but there may be method to the madness as well as narcissistic supply: profits for the permanent war economy as well as distraction from domestic issues.
“If there is no external danger, then danger and terror have to be invented and maintained.”
— R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience
“The mechanical, mystical, and authoritarian organization of human society and of the human structure constantly precipitates the mechanical destruction of human lives in war.”
— Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
RESISTANCE
The rule of law is defined by the ruling elite. And when the law is broken by the elite there are no consequences. Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies and yet was re-elected president. This can make resistance to authoritarianism very difficult.
“The fact that the affluent warfare state unleashes its annihilating potential on the backwards countries illuminates the magnitude of the threat of anyone challenging their hegemony by not pursuing overproduction via technology.”
— Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
“The system has its weakest point where it shows its most brutal strength: in the escalation of its military potential (which seems to press for periodic actualization with ever shorter interruptions of peace and preparedness).” (ibid)
“A colonial war which takes place at the margin of the civilized world…is practiced with good conscience for war is war.”
— Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.”
— Donald Trump, February 28, 2026 after attacking Iran
Marcuse noted that “Opposition to war and military intervention requires something that is much harder to produce – the spread of uncensored and unmanipulated knowledge.”
If we can stop destroying ourselves we may stop destroying others. We have to begin by admitting and even accepting our violence, rather than blindly destroying ourselves with it.
— R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience
CONCLUSION
Americans like to think that we don’t have an ideology which of course is proof that we do. We also like to believe our government is not authoritarian. And that we don’t wage aggressive wars, we are freeing people in other countries. And so it goes.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
— Philip K. Dick
