Clinical Psychology concentrates on studying individuals’ psychologies and pointing out their psychological issues.  However, it is self evident that individual psychology is a product of social psychology. That is to say that the study of social psychology should take precedence over the study of individual psychology, for what the individual does seems mere variation of what the larger society does.

       In fact, it can be argued, as sociology argues, that in absolute terms there may not even be such a thing as the individual and that only the collective is real!

       Nor is this a new idea for Hinduism and Buddhism actually sees individuality as an illusion and teaches that in reality only the collective self, aka God, is real.  As these oriental religions and philosophies see it, the pursuit of individuation, separation from the whole, is the illusion that gave rise to this world, a dream that can never be realized, for in truth all are one self. According to the Oriental world view, enlightenment entails the realization that only one self, to which we are all integral parts, exist.

       Hitherto, operating under the illusion of individual psychology, I tended to focus on individuals and their psychological issues. However, increasingly, it is becoming apparent to me that the individual psychology is a mere variation of a larger social psychology and that where there is individual psychopathology it is a variation of a larger social psychopathology.

       It is becoming apparent to me that to understand the individual we must understand the society to which he is a part of and that to heal the individual’s psychopathology we must heal the social psychopathology that produced him.

        Consider the Nigerians penchant for titles.  Just about every Nigerian wants to be addressed by some empty title, such as Doctor, Professor, Chief, Alhaji, Alhaja, Oba, Emir, Sultan, Prince, King, Monarch etc. A Nigerian who is an engineer would like to be addressed as Engineer fool; if an architect he would like to be addressed as Architect Idiot; if a lawyer he would like to be addressed as lawyer ambulance chaser, if a hitherto mediocre college teacher who is now given patronage political office he would like to be called Professor Bushman (for he has not contributed anything new to whatever he claims to profess in).

         Initially, I tried to understand this amusing phenomenon from an individual psychological perspective. (It is amusing because these people are aware that in other parts of the world folks are not addressed as they want to be addressed.  For example, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkle, has PhD in Chemistry but nobody calls her Dr Merle, just Ms Merkle; Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister is a lawyer but nobody calls him BAN Lawyer but just Mr. Blair etc).

       Lately, I realize that I was mistaken in my individualistic approach to Nigerians title craziness. The problem is systemic and has to be looked at from a cultural and societal perspective rather than from an individual person’s stand point.

      You cannot understand the individual Nigerian’s apparent childish fascination with bogus titles unless you understand that he is behaving as his culture disposes him to do. It is his culture that is the problem; he is merely a manifestation of that cultural problem.

        If you want to heal the title crazed Nigerian of his infantile narcissism you have to heal his culture of narcissism.

         Nigerian cultures and societies, apparently, operate on the premise that some human beings could ever be superior to others.  These primitive cultures, apparently, are predicated on the false premise that it is possible for one human being to be better than others. They apparently encourage their individual members to prove that they are superior to one another. These primitive cultures reward those persons who seem better than other people. Those who seem to be better, the very important persons, VIPs, are elevated and respected and those who seem unimportant are not respected.

      These primitive societies reward social differentiations, differentiating some human beings into classes of being. They respect and worship those who seem more important than others and generally ignore those who seem not socially important.

          All human beings want to be accepted by other members of their society. Desiring to be accepted by their society, Nigerians strive to seem to meet the indices of social acceptance: importance, so that their people would see them as such hence accept them.

      Individual Nigerians are scared to not meet the indices of social acceptance hence become rejected by their people.

       Apparently, like savages everywhere they believe that if their people do not see them as important hence accept them, that is, if socially rejected that they would die. 

        To be socially rejected is the most dreaded thing for primitive savages. Anthropologists point out that primitive human beings conform intoto to their people’s cultures and would do whatever the cultures (and their leaders) ask them to do to avoid social rejection. To be rejected by the group makes the primitive to literally wither and die.

        A healthy primitive who is rejected by his people may suddenly die. The cause of his death would not be biological but social psychological. 

       The primitive band has a strong hold on its members. These cultures have total control over their people’s life styles.

         The shrewd leaders of these cultures understand the hold they have over their people and manipulate the threat of social rejection to get people to conform to their primitive ways. They threaten to reject you if you seem to behave in a manner that they do not approve, and to avoid social rejection you do as they ask you to do; you crawl back into the social womb where you presumably feel secure.

         (Rejection in the temporal world is often generalized to mean rejection by dead ancestors and primitives do not want to be rejected by their dead ancestors. This way, the Machiavellian leaders of these primitive societies manipulate their group members into conforming to their primitive ways. The superstitious churches of this world behave similarly; they exploit their members fear of what happens to them when they die and tell them to do this or do that to avoid God’s rejection and in conforming to the churches dictates the churches control them.)

        Thus fearing social rejection, Nigerians, who are just one step removed from savagery, strive to seem socially important. They do whatever they could to appear important in their society’s eyes.

        Seeming importance means having an Ozo title (if an Igbo); being an Alhaji (man) or Alhaja (woman) if Hausa Muslim; Oba if Yoruba, Emir and Sultan if Fulani.

          The word Emir is Arabic for chief; the word chief is a name for a German war band leader. Hausa Muslims who call themselves emirs are really calling themselves chiefs. These people are truly a primitive set of people; they call themselves chiefs, a German name for the leader of their primitive war bands; a name the Germans themselves have discarded. Sultan is Turkish for King. These days, some Nigerians even call themselves by Anglo-Saxon titles, such as King, Prince, Duke, Earl, Lord, Sir etc. Nigerians will latch unto whatever name makes them seem important in their childish eyes, regardless of how ludicrous such names are. For God’s sake, if you must give yourself ridiculous titles why not give yourself African ones, not god dammed European or Arab ones.

         The salient point is that it is society itself that insists on people becoming differentiated into vertical and horizontal categories, some important and others unimportant.  

       Nigerian societies, like primitive societies everywhere, are conditional in accepting people; they accept those who seem superior to other people and in so doing dispose the people to strive to seem important hence accepted by society.

       Conditional social acceptance accounts for that infantile narcissism seen in Nigerians striving for social-existential importance.

        For our present purposes, the point is that it is society that is sick and Nigerians are merely socialized into this sick society and do what their sick society demands of them for adaptation to it. In adapting to their sick societies they become sick.

        (Carl Rogers, in his seminal book, Client Centered Therapy, shows us that individuals and parents who accept their children conditionally, when they seem to do what they value, produce neurotic children, children who reject their real selves and strive to become ideal selves, their images of who their society would accept. To be healthy the individual must accept his real self. Abraham Maslow demonstrated conclusively that highly achieving persons are those who accept their real selves and actualize their real selves’ potentials, whereas neurotics seeking to actualize the fantasies of their false important self concepts and self images generally end up less productive. The implication is that unconditional positive acceptance of people is healthy and conditional acceptance of people is sick and makes people sick.)

         Nigerian cultures are narcissistic and produce narcissistic Nigerians.

       Briefly, the narcissistic personality disordered person feels deeply worthless and valueless; he feels that his life has no meaning and purpose; but he masks this deep rooted existential doubt with appearance of importance; at the conscious levels he would like to feel important and special and presents  his ego and body to other people to admire; he lives to seek attention from other people; he wants other people to see him as a very important person; generally, he works hard and attains social importance but he contributes nothing significant to human evolution for to make real contribution one must accept ones self, as one is, not as one wants to be, grandiose, and not seek others perception of one as a very important person.

     The narcissist feels empty and believes that by obtaining admiration and attention from other people that he is filled up and made important. Thus he lives to get. He does not give but seeks to get.

         He exploits other people and uses them to get what he ants out of life. Since he feels superior to other people he justifies exploiting other people, after all he is the king and they are the servants and ought to serve him.  He is a user and not a giver. The word love is not part of his vocabulary.

       Is this not the definition of Nigerian politicians? What do they go to politics for other than to steal from the public treasury, to get rather than give attention?  Can you actually imagine a Nigerian politician serving the people, figuring out the peoples needs and serving them? My God, the world would come to an end when Nigerians changed and became service oriented human beings, rather than merely seeking political offices to give them a sense of prestige in their and other people’s eyes.

       These people are, and there is no chartable way of putting it, savages in political offices. Civilized persons serve other people; savages take from other people; savages cut off other peoples heads and wave them in the air and in so doing  seem powerful; savages sell other people into slavery and in so doing seem powerful.

        Contemporary Nigerian politicians are dressed up savages selling their people into slavery. It is time somebody called them what they are, benighted souls. It is time we ceased referring to them in charitable euphemisms.

          A human being is truly human if he lives to serve people; he is evil if he lives to get from other people. Since Nigerian politicians have chosen to exist to steal from the people and do not give selfless public service to the people, they are evil; in psychological terms, they narcissistic personalities. They are sick persons who need to be healed; their thinking and behaviors need to be changed, from self serving to public serving. A psychologically healthy person loves all people and serves our common interests. (Since Nigerians decided to be primitive and evil, by not serving their fellow country men, I have made a choice to call them primitive and evil persons, no more understanding and explaining away their darkness.)

           It is society itself, the culture in general that is sick; individual Nigerians merely adjust to their sick cultures and fear not adjusting to them. Nigerians are scarred shitless not been seen as very important persons, for not to be seen as such is to be ignored and, as anthropologists tell us primitive men are not yet individuated enough to live as independent persons but must be accepted by their group to be alive.

       Primitive men often kill themselves if their group rejects them. Since the various groups in Nigeria accept people only when they seem important, Nigerians strive to seem important, for they fear not seeming important hence risking their people’s rejection. Nigerians fear social rejection for it reignites their masked existential anxiety and other primordial fears, fears that people reduce by climbing into the womb of society.

       For our present purposes, Nigerians seek titles because they want to be accepted by their people. Thus you find Nigerian semi illiterates buying doctorate degrees and actually calling themselves doctors, for in their primitive eyes to be called doctor is to be socially important hence accepted by their primitive people.

        In civilization we learn and come to know that all human beings are the same and are coequal. No individual is better than other people. It does not matter whether the individual has an IQ of 140 and another an IQ of 70, they are the same and coequal in the eyes of God.

        No race is superior to other races. No gender is superior to the other gender.  This knowledge is actually spiritual for in creation God created all his children as the same and equal. It is their desire for differences and specialness that led people to seem to separate from their father and from each other. To return to God and to each other, to unify, people must jettison their pursuit of specialness and accept their existential oneness, sameness and equality.

        The founders of the American polity declared that “we hold these truths as self evident, that all people are equal”.  That statement was rooted in awareness of the spiritual reality of man. If those founders were actuated by mere perception there was no way they could have said such seeming outrageous thing.

        Consider, in 1776 Africans were running around naked and no one would consider them equal to sophisticated Chinese mandarins (who, by all accounts, were then at the apogee of human civilization), or with the semi civilized Europeans. If appearances were their guide, they certainly could not have said that all people are equal.

      Appearances show us people who seem different; some are smart and others dumb; some wealthy, others poor; some powerful and others weak. Appearances show differences but at the deep level we all know that despite appearances of differences all people are the same and are equal.

         Those who are at a higher level of spiritual evolution automatically realize that we are all the same and equal hence treat all as the same. Mystics, the most highly evolved human beings see themselves as the same with all people. It is primitives that see themselves as better than other people.

        To the extent that individual Nigerians would like to see themselves as better than other people they are primitive.  Their culture of narcissism is a primitive culture, for a civilized culture accepts and treats all human beings as the same and equal, not just before the law but in all areas of being.

       Nigerian cultures are sick (by insisting on differentiating people, seeing some as more important than others). Nigerians apparent title craziness is their adjustment to their sick cultures. Therefore, if we are ever to get Nigerians to stop their childish obsession with titles, we have to change their underlying sick cultures. We have to change Nigerian cultures and get them to accept all people as the same and coequal and respect and love all people.

        Put differently, we have to civilize the primitive cultures that teach that there could ever be differences between those created as equal by their creator.

        There is no healing the individual until you heal his society, for even if you heal the individual he goes back to his sick society and that sick society makes him sick, again. Consider when I obtained PhD from the University of California , people around me called me Dr Osuji. I told them to desist from doing so and just call me Thomas. When I was teaching at a University they insisted on calling me Professor Osuji. I told them that I am a professor (teacher) to my students, not to them, and that, therefore, they should call me by my first name, but they insisted on calling me what their culture disposed them to call me.

        To avoid being sucked into their neurotic foolishness, I stopped letting any one know any thing about my background. 

       Since I did done away with pretense of importance, Nigerians being part of a culture that respects only seeming important persons began disrespecting me; in fact, some of them would literally ignore my presence and go worship the empty vessels they see as doctors and chiefs.

        Being a normal human being, naturally, I wanted to be accepted by other people. Given the social ignominy which I felt, I could see how if I was a weak minded person I could have changed and started doing what Nigerians want folks to do, seem important, so that they would see me as such.  Seeing me as important would then make me feel belonged to their culture hence reduce my existential sense of aloneness.

         Luckily for me, in Carl Jung’s terms, I am fully individuated and could care less whether people respected me or not (in Eric Fromm’s terms, I am a person who accepted his self as alone in the world) hence I chose to be who I am rather than pretend to be important, as Nigerians do, to be accepted by my fellow Nigerians. 

         We must figure out a way to heal Nigeria ’s narcissistic culture if we want to heal narcissistic Nigerians.

        When Nigerians are healed of their narcissism they would become humble and as humble persons become productive and service oriented persons.

         Go see the superstars making contributions to science and technology; in the main, they are devoid of excessive egoism, vanity and pride.  The proud are empty vessels making a great deal of noise but are irrelevant to contemporary science and technology.

       Are importance masquerading Nigerians relevant in the world of science and technology? Of course they are not. If is when Nigerians become humble and overcome their craze for titles would they become service oriented and contribute to science and technology.

*There are many good books on narcissism, and on the culture of narcissism. Christopher Larsh, for example, wrote a book by that title, but he was talking about those Governor Jerry Brown of California used to call the “me generation” of America . I do not want to make this paper academic, for I am writing for the general public, by citing references. If you would like to understand the phenomenon of narcissism, please Google narcissism and read up on it.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

March 1, 2007

Robot  Villager

# 1 ust about every Nigerian wants to be addressed by some empty title, such as Doctor, Professor, Chi...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 02.03.2007 05:47

EyesWideOpen  Villager

# 2 I have spent long hours wondering why and how Nigerians think the way they do. I agree our cultures feed a lot of our behaviour and cognitive processing, but i feel that the essence of adulthood and maturity is for each individulal to be able to bring down thier choices to simple decisions between what is beneficial to them and what is not. However, Nigerians are driven a lot by what society dictates despite the implication of harm to self and others especially in the long term. We seem to be stuck somewhere between satisfying the id and the superego that has been built from maladaptive experiences taught by the elders. I have even felt myself the odd thinker and asked myself lots of times if i am not the abnormal one who really should think like the group. When you speak, they say you are doing like oyibo. My conclusion Osuji is this......those of us that have the ability and / or have made the choice to think beyond the lines owe it to ourselves and our children to guide as many people as we can to thinking in the first place .....because i fear that the real problem is that people dont think. like narcissi didnt ask himself the question....why do people like me so much? and what can i do with this emotion they are all dislaying?, many nigerians dont ask themselves why they do what they do. Besides wherever you find narcissi, Echo isnt far off, admiring, admiring, admiring and being unable to speak.....wherein lies the nigerian problem - the narcissis and the dependent echos who can only feed narcissis ego a little more. Elders rather than help the younger ones to become independent prefer to keep giving in sporadic tiny bits so you forever remain beholden to them. If you succeed without their help, the next step is a test of your allegiance and whether you will still be respectful to them. Pray tell me Osuji...what group do you start with if you want to effect a change? If both narcissi and echo loose their roles there will be chaos wont there be?.......or maybe we can effect a systemic change then? I totally enjoyed reading your article.(except for the bad language!) Posted by EyesWideOpen| 02.03.2007 14:05

truthsayer33  Villager

# 3 Oga I enjoyed your writeup but disagree on some points.In my part of Nigeria a child is born satisfied and confident of his equality within the collective.Material assets do not make the man or woman. I also do not see being naked as a mark of the primitive ..go ask European naturists. I recall my childhood living in a mud house with thatched roof.the house was so cool and comfortable,I would argue a civilized adaptation to a tropical climate. Fela understood all this and tried to educate us out of our mental slavery. Posted by truthsayer33| 03.03.2007 05:30