Paper, In Reclaiming Community, ‘Look to the Organization’
Doug Hamilton
In Reclaiming Community, ‘Look to the Organization’
Disordered Personality in Community,
Strategic Reconstruction after a Narcissistic Disordering..
While thinking of a badly behaving poor performing disordered narcissist in our midst to some degree that we (any of us) do live with an ego we are all narcissists. The lament that narcissists are ‘the problem’ is too broad to describe the problem of narcissism and its arrogance that may show itself in so many ways that we have at hand.
A problem for any of us for a life in any group or organization often is with the ‘disordered’ narcissist in the group. That, the disordered person, is where group conventions or mission around the reason for a group ‘to be’ needs to be held clear and outfront for everyone to protect a group for everyone in it.
Clarity of mission and organization is what protects groups from ‘bad behavior’. Mostly for bad behavior displayed in a group most often it is just of bad upbringing and filters and not necessarily mental illness. In either case clarity in mission and organization in operation is what protects everyone in the processes of being in a group. By example the TM communities have long suffered in fragmentation and loss of cohesion around their lack of gathering by personality leadership in facilitating core reasons for being.
This studied reference link below is too particular clinically but it is quite substantial in describing the disordered person in a group. What it reveal for the purpose here is that disordered narcissism in groups most always falls down when looked at, compared to, or held to, metrics for performance.
“.. Known as narcissistic disorders:
Kohut studied a difficult class of disturbed patients with what is known as narcissistic disorders..
they showed grandiose self-confidence and--unlike most patients--an extraordinary lack of self-doubt. Often they would be quite clear-headed and perceptive; ..revealed to have little or no conscience or sense of guilt.
Their extreme self-containment and self-absorption, along with their confident social manner, made them very appealing to others, who seemed to warm to some part of themselves that they recognized in these figures. This "mirroring" process in which a strong figure sees others as parts of his self, while the others see themselves in him, alerted Kohut to a narcissistic explanation of charisma.
So "brittle" did their confidence and self-certainty become that they were sometimes unable to admit to a gap in their knowledge; their need to appear strong was so shallow as to render them unable to ask for information, assistance, or advice. They were reluctant to seek therapy but had been forced to do so because of having been compromised by various fraudulent or sexually perverse behaviors.
Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities
Prophetic Charisma: A Psychological Explanation for the 'Castaneda Phenomenon'
Introduction by Corey Donovan
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Along with this description are historical examples of the loss of communal cohesion from personalities of rigid administrative, dictatorial, and poor leadership behavior in communal spiritual groups:
Tyranny in Administration, Shaker Elder Philemon Stewart
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/PXOdRY1SlUY
In Strategy Reconstruction after a loss of communal cohesion from bad leadership..
the work of conscious reconstruction in cohesion of a group damaged by disordered badly behaving people steps back to ‘shoring’ the core values and organizational process that facilitate the group and its members.
For instance,
Engaging Restorative Justice in Reclamation of Community
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/AM9bhYe1dXI
Core Values & Communal Critical Mass
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/8Cgytr5iCCI
A conclusion,
‘Communal Endurance’, evidently by how examples within these linked papers have gone, is not just with elders earnestly imploring or ‘listening’ but where there is communal group engagement and a bringing in of generational succession with clarity of mission and organization that groups may live on.
Beyond disordered behaviors clarity of mission and organization are the ‘vector and rudder’ of an enduring community.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
..or, to regather or reconstitute as a group.
Don Bench
"Kohut studied a difficult class of disturbed patients with what is known as narcissistic disorders.. they showed grandiose self-confidence and--unlike most patients--an extraordinary lack of self-doubt. Often they would be quite clear-headed and perceptive; ..revealed to have little or no conscience or sense of guilt.Their extreme self-containment and self-absorption, along with their confident social manner, made them very appealing to others, who seemed to warm to some part of themselves that they recognized in these figures. "