Existential Psychology

Group Membership

By  | 

Have you ever noticed how some people, when surrounded by a posse of friends, are loud, confident, and exuberant but when you get these same people on their own they clam up, becoming cautious and even shy? This phenomenon is so widespread and common that it’s the rule not the exception.

What is going on from a psychological point of view is masochism, where by latching on to a larger entity you come to identify with it, drawing your strength and even your sense of Self from belonging to this larger entity. Group membership at pretty much every level serves this function for a lot of people, whether we are talking about a group of friends, a family, various clubs, or nationalism.

There is a sense of power that is derived from knowing you represent something bigger than you, filling you with confidence and pride without necessarily having to do anything to deserve these states. This is not to say that being part of a group is a bad thing. Quite the opposite actually; Humans are social animals, built to need each other, and no one can be happy or healthy without feeling connected.

The danger from a self-actualization point of view is not group membership per se, but rather subsuming the development of your own unique potentialities for the traits and qualities of the group, halting your growth in order to feel the safety and security that come from masochistically latching on to something bigger than you. In the process you lose your one chance to become who you really are. If a group were perfectly suited in every way to your development at every stage of your journey there would be no friction and the fit would be perfect, but this is never the case. The price you usually pay for identifying with something else is losing yourself.

The question to ask yourself is what you use the groups you are affiliated with for, and what they use you for. The paradox of what we would term ‘healthy’ group membership is that you are simultaneously fully part of the group and fully yourself. It’s a place where you get to develop your own unique personality and qualities within safe and supportive confines. You wouldn’t be able to develop who you are on a desert island, you need the social sphere for this process. The key is finding the right situation, one where your confidence and sense of Self don’t depend on the group but are fostered within it.

Related posts:

  1. Identity And Minority Groups In social justice classes you’ll usually hear about how those who identity with various minority groups are uncomfortable with the burden of representation placed upon them by members of the dominant majority. One person is unfairly expected to stand in for a cultural group, to be this culture’s mouthpiece so to speak. Philosophical discussions will […]...
  2. Racism We’ve never really been content with the definition of racism as power plus prejudice. It’s a social justice trope that explains the how of racism at a macro level without ever explaining the why. Plus how do we define power? In terms of the power plus prejudice paradigm what seems to be meant is the […]...
  3. Scapegoating In any struggle for power, even if the cause is right and just or maybe especially when the cause is right and just, it’s almost irresistibly tempting to heap all the blame onto a specific group or entity, to paint this group or entity as evil and villainous, as the incarnation of all that is […]...
  4. Groups All groups, small and big alike, serve the same basic psychological function, which is to allow for the submerging of individuality in favor of connecting to something bigger. In this article we’ll be discussing the psychological pull of groups primarily from a deficit point of view, from the felt state of deprivation, from how they […]...
  5. The Blame Game How much time do we waste over the course of our lives blaming ourselves for past events? We all play the blame game, but what’s really interesting is that depending on our own individual psychological makeups we might take on too much or too little of that blame, and maybe that’s why we never find […]...
  6. Popularity The desire to be popular comes from the same psychological place as the desire to be famous. Both can only occur in an individualistic culture, one where you have become poignantly aware of your separateness from the group, of your responsibility to think and act primarily on your own behalf as opposed to happily playing […]...
  7. Gaining Power From The Group Losing Power Because Of The Group Although it’s not usually consciously conceptualized as such, the psychological reason to identify with any group, be it a clique, team, religion, nation, or any other entity, is to augment power. By yourself you’re small, insignificant, exposed, but by being part of a larger entity you expand the boundaries of that small Self, feeding off […]...
  8. Self-Actualization Lasts A Lifetime Debates rage about the best way to insure that children become happy, healthy adults and what we lose sight of is that these discussions imply that people have no power to direct their own development. Instead they’re almost viewed as products to be manufactured where what matters is making sure the assembly line functions properly, […]...
  9. Freedom While most people profess to cherish human freedom many of them aren’t actually talking about freedom at all, they just think they are. What they’re professing to cherish, what they seek to protect and bolster, are certain rights, privileges, and opportunities for themselves and for the members of the cultural group with which they identify. […]...
  10. Ostracism It’s better to express your authentic thoughts and feelings and be excluded than to minimize these thoughts and feelings and be accepted. But the fear of social ostracism hangs over a lot of what we do and many unconsciously prefer being included to being themselves. Ostracism really does hurt. The brain apparently interprets rejection just […]...
  11. Power and Responsibility In a culture dominated by power hungry individuals it’s easy to forget that countless people are afraid of their power and, instead of developing it through unfolding their own unique potentialities, shy away from it and instead latch on to some perceived stronger entity. They gain their sense of power and purpose not through personal […]...
  12. Mob Mentality Have you ever let yourself be swept away by the emotion of a large group? Whether the scene is a sporting event, political rally, rock concert, or dangerous mob the psychological principles are pretty much the same. One of the central paradoxes of being human is that we cannot be sane and happy without relating […]...
  13. Conformity Conformity is the evil twin of community. Both are attempts to bridge the chasm of existential isolation, attempts to mitigate the deep sense of loneliness that is our birthright as thinking, feeling beings poignantly aware of ourselves as separate individuals, individuals whose thoughts and feelings can only ever be partially communicated, never fully shared. We […]...
  14. Masochism Explained From the psychoanalytic point of view masochism is a life orientation, a fundamental solution to the problem of human existence. Most people think of masochism, along with sadism, in sexual terms but the sexual sphere is only one behavioral manifestation of a much deeper psychological way of being and relating. In a nutshell masochism solves […]...
  15. Wanting To Save The World The psychological reality is that a lot of people interested in saving the world are in truth interested in furthering their own sense of grandiosity, in confirming their idealized self-image as righteous, heroic, messianic figures whose actions would finally bring them the admiration of the masses and the glory they believe they deserve. In a […]...
  16. Resistance To Authority “Human History began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.” – Erich Fromm In our culture we find that resistance to authority is often classified as pathological, as a criteria for dysfunction. This should be no surprise when we consider that psychology […]...
  17. Confronting Cruelty The most important thing to understand about cruelty, about taking pleasure in inflicting pain upon on others, is that the life attitude is the result of stunted psychological and emotional development. Cruel people might seem powerful, imposing, even godlike, they might exercise real power in the world, but in actuality they’re broken human beings. And […]...
  18. Group Narcissism We usually think of narcissism as being specific to the individual so what do we mean by group narcissism? To understand the phenomenon we first have to understand that the individual narcissist usually does have some traits or talents that allow him to showcase his narcissism without a lot of push back from the outside […]...
  19. Group Development I spent a few days partaking in various activities leading up to a wedding this weekend where many people came together who did not know each other very well. I got to observe some of the psychological characteristics of group development. When a new group forms there is usually a predictable pattern that can be […]...
  20. If You Are Being Made Into The Mascot In Your Social Group If you are being made the mascot in your social group don’t go along with it. The psychology of turning someone into a mascot is maliciousness masked as good natured fun, it’s abuse masked as friendliness. As the mascot, you’re turned into a caricature, you’re robbed of your multi-faceted human dimensions and made one dimensional […]...
Related Items