Trump as Group Leader

What may explain Trump’s powerful appeal to a segment of America’s population? What leadership characteristics or practices does Trump use to foster his appeal to his base followers?

In a recent paper, two practicing psychoanalysts, Marie Rudden and Stephanie Brandt, use social psychological literature on group formation and group functioning and their psychoanalyst experiences to try to answer these questions. Some of the literature they reference may be familiar to leadership students, faculty, and practitioners. For example, through my teaching about teams in the SL program, I reviewed material on teams and groups by William Bion. However, other scholars mentioned, such as Melanie Klein, P. M. Turquet, Stuart Twemlow, and Vamik Volkan, are unfamiliar to me.

In short, Rudden and Brandt conclude that formal and informal groups are powerfully affected by certain regressive emotional forces. These forces can become ascendant by problematic leadership. Forces in the United States have produced a sense of threat to group identity, coherence, and stability. A leader such as Donald Trump inflames projections and encourages a psychotic group process and is himself inflamed by the group regression. The following lays out how the authors reached this conclusion.

Analysis of Trump’s appeal to his followers

Trump uses several mechanisms to create a strong bond between himself and his followers. Several of these mechanisms result in his followers identifying closely with Trump while others relate to Trump’s ability to create a joint sense of grievance and anger.

Followers identifying with Trump

Trump’s followers identify with his power, wealth, and success. Trump “cultivates very specific kinds of identification, both conscious and otherwise.” He does this by continually referring to his business acumen, wealth, and toughness. Through his cultivated presentation or his impression management, he “offers his followers an identification with power, decisiveness, and wealth.” He says his past successes prove he can “take charge,” “cut through red tape,” and negotiate deals that are good for his constituents.

Through all his cultivated presentations Trump almost invariably avoids factual information. He provides little factual detail about who he is. His penchant for avoiding factual information “is a way of maintaining mystery, of cultivating an aura of almost magical power that can appeal to peoples’ desire to trust, to hope that this leader will use his power to their benefit and will allow them to share in it too…”

His followers connect with Trump by identifying him as someone who is like them, someone who uniquely understands them. He encourages this by referring to his audiences as a “‘We – a family’ who share an almost unmediated bond with him.” Trump’s success at this leads his followers to think that he, too, is an outsider, apart from the elites, that Trump understands them, and elites do not. Trump tells the truth, un-doctored and without bullshit.

Trump “employs the strategic cultivation of a dependency regression among his group followers – stoking their craving for a strong leader who will solve their difficulties and allow them to share in his fantasized power.” The term “dependency regression” comes from Bion. He uses this term to refer to a regressive process whereby a group engages in excessive dependency on its leader, giving over decisions and actions to the leader. Individual members of the group no longer make their own independent contributions, including providing constructive criticism to the leader.

Trump never engages his followers, never tries to engage them in sharing their own ideas about problems and how to solve the problems. Trump scorns policy details as inauthentic, as distasteful “political speak.” He states that “he alone can fix this,” whatever the this is. His followers do not need to think about solutions to the nation’s problems. All they need to do is to listen to him.

Inculcating the notion that his followers are part of a “we,” part of a “family,” Trump and his base “draw a ‘Them” by way of contrast. Trump’s “facial expressions of disbelief and disgust for his rivals serve as invitations to the crowd to ‘smarten up,’ to see what he perceives as the other candidates’ flaws, to identify with his rapid-fire, ‘tough’ assessments.” He gives his crowds what they want to hear: “the tough, unvarnished, ‘no-nonsense’ assessments of a ‘winner,’ decisively squelching all the other ‘losers.'”

His followers identify with him as an aggressor. Trump’s ability to fire up a crowd “has the power to morph quickly into something increasingly ugly, threatening, even violent.” “‘You know,’ he would say at his campaign rallies,’…these protestors have no respect. They would never have been allowed to do this back in the day. They would have been beaten up so badly they would never have dared to protest again!'” This kind of myth appeals to his conservative followers who believe they are being displaced by a rapidly changing world. Trump signals he will punish others who deserve it. “The crowd, emboldened, join in an identification with the aggressor; they may also do this out of repressed fear of being left out, mocked, or punished themselves.”

Here, the authors use another Bion concept, that of a fight or flight aggression. According to Bion, a group begins to live out a fantasy of an urgent need to fight or flee an oppressive force in order to maintain the group’s identify if not its existence. “Trump portrays those who do not follow him as enemies who are weakening the country, weakening its identity and its place in the world. He pushed his group to fight, not to flee. His and his group’s enemies cannot take over. He invites the crowd “to defend themselves . . . . The crowd should hurt and humiliate them, those others who would by their very existence and presence, weaken and shame the group itself.”

Thus, Trump’s followers identify with his “shamelessness as a manic defense against powerlessness and injury.” Several times Trump says he will pay for the legal bills of those who rough up a protestor. These words “are direct appeals to the undercurrent of sadism that can co-exist” with an ongoing social anger over accumulated injustices. Trump’s encouragement of sadism can result in what Freud observed as a giving away an individual’s superego constraints, which become “delegated to the leader.” People who otherwise do not join in bullying “may feel freer to express – and even enjoy – their sadism in this socially encouraged context – especially if they feel shamed into it.”

Projecting anger, fear, and revenge

Rudden and Brandt point out that the “relationship between the fear of weakness or identity threat, a reactive shame, and the desire to undo the shame through the pure enjoyment of sadism is exploited by this leader in a manner not often discussed in the psychoanalysis of groups and organizations.”

Trump’s followers enjoy with him a shared anger. “it is certainly clear that within the crowds at Trump rallies, his followers express considerable anger via their sadistic responses to certain named ‘enemies.’: Muslims, ‘bad hombre’ Mexican drug dealers, ‘Black Lives Matter’ protesters, and especially toward his main rival, Hillary Clinton (“‘Lock her up!’). The fact that these emotions are so easily generated – and seem to be so fully embraced, a source of identity and pleasure – may be at least in part a reaction to a feeling of what the press has dubbed ‘insecurity or disenfranchisement’ within the group.”

Clinically, the authors argue, “anger, in reaction to either sadness, humiliation, or helplessness, causes an individual (or individuals within a group setting) to feel much stronger than the state it defends against. . . . Anger makes one feel less injured or depleted, simply on the most basic level of mental energy . . . . but shame and humiliation hold a special place in this analysis, as does the traumatic experience of helplessness. Thus, Trump’s ability to mobilize extremes of anger and sadism are based on his providing his followers with the antidote to feelings of shame and impotence.

One such antidote involves Trump reversing his followers’ lack of social status by being unashamed “of being even worse than most of his followers. He is openly dishonest, misogynistic, corrupt, old, unattractive . . . . and he does not care . . . . he turns the usual shame response of hiding, fearing disclosure, embarrassment, etc. into a reason for pride, even superiority over those who feel shame at all.”

A second antidote involves encouraging his followers to violent reactions that evaporate the usual restraints of conscious. In this instance, Trump is responding to his followers’ perceived humiliation of being displaced by those who they perceive as being beneath them, such as minorities and immigrants. This perceived humiliation releases violent reactions at Trump rallies where one sees people wearing “Slavery is good” shirts, threatening death to Hillary Clinton and chanting “Lock her up.” Trump lets his followers know respect or stature has been taken from them, stolen, and taking it back is simply self-defense. This kind of messaging is geared toward male aggression as a defense against inadequacy and dependency.

The authors point out that there is sometimes an erotic thrust within the sadism of the crowd. Some of his followers, for example, wear tee-shirts with statements such as “Grab MY pussy,” “Trump that Bitch,” and “Deported Right to My Bedroom.” The authors note that “sadism is pleasurable because it is intrinsically erotic as well as aggressive.”

When Trump activates a need for revenge or aggressive self-defense among his followers, he often intentionally stirs racist feelings and beliefs. These feelings and beliefs play on long-time American narratives. The authors illustratively refer to a poll that shows nearly half of White Southerners feel under attack. The literature they reference suggests that such feelings exist in sub-cultures in which violence is simultaneously denied and blamed on the victim.

Trump also appeals to fantasies that emerge in groups who fear an imminent collapse of their welfare or identity. These fantasies involve “the magical wish for ‘purity’ as opposed to the ‘contamination’ by the blood of outsiders . . . . . White supremacists, whose allegiance Trump has openly courted, articulate this idea quite clearly.”

Finally, Trump excels at projecting his followers’ sense of disenfranchisement and need on those Others “who may use provisions of the social safety net.” These Others include illegal immigrants, regardless if they pay taxes and work for minimal pay, who are “maligned essentially as greedy, rapacious invaders. The American poor are depicted as lazy, slovenly, unwilling to help themselves, and essentially greedy, entitled and ungrateful mouths to feed.”

Reciprocal impact on group and leader

At a rally on March 1, 2016, in Louisville, KY, Trump notices three peaceful protestors in the crowd. He personally blames them for the “‘fact’ that ‘we (Americans) are going down fast.’ He repeats this several times, then intones ‘Get them out of here. Get them out of here.’ The protestors are then bodily pushed and shoved out of the arena, forming the basis for a lawsuit alleging that Trump incited the crowd to violence. . . . In this disturbing encounter, one sees a kind of symbiotic escalation:” Trump encourages the crowd to see the protestors as enemies who will damage the crowd. The excitement of the crowd mounts and its energy encourages Trump to “cross a political red line by actively condoning violence.”

Using this as an example, Rudden and Brandt comment, “Leaders who are particularly narcissistic tend to feed on the energy and affirmation of crowds, which increase their sense of personal power. Such leaders are thus less likely to try to shape this energy, turning it away from raw emotion but toward constructive solutions to shared social problems. For such narcissistic leaders, the rush of emotional energy becomes an end in itself. . . . Observing Donald Trump’s leadership is to be concerned that he has an excess of both paranoia and narcissism that does not serve his constituents well. He loses himself in the intemperate narrative of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ and has difficulty stopping the process of feeding the crowd the ugly lines that they begin to crave.”

Analysts with backgrounds similar to Rudden and Brandt see regressions in many human groups or organizations. What encourages or triggers these kinds of regressions? They answer this question by saying, “Leadership that is unrealistic, an organizational structure that thwarts goal achievement, a sub-group that remains unheard, or goals adopted by the group members that are not reality-based constitute major factors in promoting or exacerbating group regressions.” They also say the fantasies of purity vs. contamination “are common when a group perceives its boundaries being invaded by outsiders (e.g. immigrants) or when it perceives a sub-group as becoming too powerful (e.g. black citizens seeking to correct current inequalities in criminal sentencing, police behavior, etc.).

Their final observation on group-leader reciprocity is that “forces within groups themselves may determine leadership style as much as or more than does an individual leader’s personality.” Thus, “Trump was elected not just because of his own ability to exploit rational and irrational fears and desires with American political culture, but his election also reflected and gave voice to these already existent and pressing national forces.”

Ramifications of the narcissistic, authoritarian leader for group functioning

Groups face a dilemma when they are led by someone who focuses much more on “personal acclaim and power than on inclusiveness, on inflaming group regressive energies, rather than on using them to focus on realistic task accomplishment.”

When the practices of a well-functioning group are stymied by a leader and prominent members who support him or her, group life becomes increasingly irrational. “When Trump labels people as ‘protestors,’ ‘bad hombres and rapists,’ or ‘radical Islamic terrorists,’ he encourages dangerous projective fantasies onto dehumanized ‘Others.’ The sweeping lack of reality in these assessments deters the group from discovering realistic solutions to their struggle with, for example, creating viable boundaries with the outside. This dedicated focus on the projective, the inflammation of irrational intolerance, gives rise to increasingly psychotic group functioning. The group’s linguistic structure also becomes contaminated and restricted. Donald Trump’s repeated statements that carefully reported news analyses of his administration are ‘fake news’ is an example of, and contributor toward, a psychotic degradation in group discourse.

“. . . . during the period in which this leader holds power, an increasing and prolonged divisiveness is inevitable, rendering constructive group work almost impossible.”

A final note

Rudden and Brandt end with this statement: “Within a democratic republic, alternative group leaders will inevitably emerge: whether they will be thwarted by the current authoritarian trend is as yet unknown. With the increasing structural impediments to truly democratic processes such as gerrymandering, election restrictions, corruption of the media, or worse,  the outcome remains to be seen.”

Comment

My comments fall into two sections. One focuses on the article per se, while the second covers thoughts about the way we “teach” leadership.

The Rudden and Brandt article

Both Rudden and Brandt are well-qualified professionals. Both are medical doctors who have clinical practices related to psychoanalysis. Both have published articles in professional journals and are active in professional societies; both teach at the Weill-Cornell School of Medicine. You can read a paper on leadership and regressive group processes co-authored by Rudden. I have also read several of their references, which reflect a stream of related professional and research literature. I am not suggesting that everyone with similar backgrounds would agree entirely with their analyses, but they seem very qualified to undertake the analysis presented in the paper.

I undertook this background work because I was unfamiliar with much of the literature cited by Rudden and Brandt and with some of the key terms and concepts used by the authors. I felt I needed to check it all out to see how real it is. And it is real.

The Rudden and Brandt paper matched well two other posts. One prior post covered a paper by Scott Allison and others at the University of Richmond. The Allison et al. paper discussed the concept of immature leadership as applied to Trump. They said an immature leader attracts immature followers who have a strong need for clarity, resolution, and regularity. Such followers “desire clear messengers” and “are motivated to see themselves as better and more deserving of better outcomes than others.” They point out that immature leaders activate the lower, less evolved aspects of our nature and not “the better angels.”

The other post focused on a paper by Timothy Haverda and Jeffery Halley that discussed Trump’s effective use of three theoretical devices: the lone wolf, the movement, and the exactitude of error. One can map Trump’s use of these three devices to the way Trump’s followers develop various identifications with him as well as the development of shared anger and racial grievances and fantasies.

Some reflections on “teaching” leadership

Reading and thinking about the article prompted me to reflect on my 13+ years of “teaching” leadership. We (and by “we” I am referring to the graduate leadership programs at Mountain State University and the University of Charleston) focused on the positive. We presented the theories and practices of “good leadership.” Much of this literature covers a long list of various leadership theories or models generally written by people who research and write about leadership and to some extent have practiced leadership.

I remember reading several years ago a book by Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business who has written 14 or so books on leadership, management, or organizations. The specific book to which I am referring, however, is Leadership BS.

The BS he is referring to is the way leadership is taught.  He argues that “much of the oft-repeated wisdom about leadership is based more on hope than reality, on wishes rather than data, on beliefs instead of science.” He believes that much of the leadership literature is sugar-laced but toxic involving “half-truths and self-serving stories that are so prominent in the mythology of leadership.” One of his concerns as a teacher is that students leave school with these good but, in his words, mythical leadership beliefs and face a world very much different, indeed often hostile, to what they have been taught.

At the time, I weakly agreed with Pfeffer but also thought his comments were more addressed to young people in their 20’s who had little experience in or with managerial or leadership work. Mid-career people, the focus of our leadership graduate work, would not be surprised at the real world and how different it is or would be from the leadership being taught. For example, I remember covering servant leadership in the Master’s SL program wherein almost all students saw this model of leadership as idealistic, not real, not practicable.

I also thought that focusing on what makes for good leadership made sense – this is what we wanted our students to be, to become. They needed to understand what good leadership was, how it was practiced, what theories formed the bases or foundations for the models.

After considering the Rudden and Brandt paper, I ask myself two questions or raise two possible issues. First, it now seems appropriate to me to spend more time on varieties of toxic leadership than we did in the past. I note that the Sage leadership handbook (2011) had only two mentions in the index of narcissism, both referring to the same chapter. There was no mention in the index of “dark Triad” (referring to the personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy).

Some courses, ethics most notably, give some consideration to toxic leadership. But the varieties and reality of toxic leadership should become more significant topics in the programs. This should also include material on toxic leader-follower relations – how do people who work under or for a toxic leader handle the toxic leader? What should people do and not do with specific kinds of toxic leaders?

The other issue I thought about is the underlying structure of leadership scholarship. When I first started teaching leadership, around 2001, I recall discussions about the scholarly foundations of leadership theories. These foundations were time-honored disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, and perhaps political science. There was no discipline of leadership per se. Perhaps because of the rewards available, leadership scholarship, it seems to me, quickly moved toward becoming a separate scholarly discipline. Increasingly, leadership scholars began to stand on their own ground, decoupled from a foundation based on social and behavioral science disciplines. Psychology seemed to remain important, but management, organizational development, and business-related fields of study became more significant.

Perhaps I am exaggerating, but I have a feeling that something got lost in that transition from a disciplined-based foundation to one built on leadership and management per se. This may be OK (?) for graduate leadership students with strong disciplinary foundations. But is an undergraduate leadership major meaningful or realistic? It may be if a degree is solely a ticket to increased compensation and stature. More broadly, who or what does the leadership programs serve? Perhaps the programs collectively have become too instrumental, focusing on achieving organizational outcomes. My interpretation of the current scene suggests the economy (primarily market outcomes) subsume the polity (how we govern ourselves) and society (how we relate to one another as individuals and groups). Is this what we want? Since I left teaching, I have developed a degree of skepticism about the direction of higher education – but that is a much larger issue.