| The Nature of Persecution Complex (In some Nigerians) |
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| Sunday, 10 September 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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THE NATURE OF PERSECUTION COMPLEX Ozodi Thomas Osuji Some human beings, either as individuals or as members of certain groups, feel persecuted by other human beings. Why so? This essay attempts to understand this phenomenon. Whoever feels persecuted by other persons invariably sees other persons who, in the empirical world, seem to persecute him. That is to say that there is almost always some truth to perceived sense of persecution. However, what is not readily apparent is what the seemingly persecuted person is doing to generate other people’s seeming persecution of him. It takes two to tango: what other people do and what the individual does affect each other. These two factors, the behavior of the self and other selves, must be fully taken into consideration if we are to understand persecution complex.
DELUSION DISORDER
Persecution complex is subsumed under the psychiatric category of delusion disorder. There are five types of delusion disorder: grandiose type, persecutory type, jealous type, erotomanic type and somatic type. (See, The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, 1994 for a comprehensive description of this phenomenon; I will offer a brief summary of it.) In grandiose type, the individual feels inordinately important, special and superior to other persons. Such a person is very sensitive and fears being demeaned by other persons. He easily feels demeaned, humiliated, belittled, degraded, disgraced etc. He fears criticism, for to be criticized makes him feel not good enough, that is, detracts from his wished grand self. Since all human beings are the same and equal, it follows that any sense of superiority to other persons is false; delusion is belief in what is not true as true, grandiosity is a delusion. In jealous type, the individual experiences distrust of his or her spouse (or girl/boy friend); this person feels that the spouse is cheating on him and follows her around, seeking evidence for betrayal and should he see what seems like evidence, which is likely not true, he may confront her, even beat her up. (Many abusive husbands and those involved in domestic violence, in general, tend to have this disorder. In his insecurity and grandiosity the abuser believes that he owns his spouse hence should control her behaviors; he does not own her and should never beat her.) In erotomanic type, the individual believes that some one, usually a famous person, say, a movie star, a religious figure etc, is in love with her or that she is married to him. Since the person believed to be her love object does not even know that she exists, unless she stalks him, the belief is false hence deluded. In somatic type, the individual believes that she has a medical disorder and goes from one doctor to another seeking treatment and the doctors do not discern any medical disorder in her. The individual’s belief that she has a medical disorder is false. In persecutory type, the individual believes that other people do not like him and are actively trying to harm his interests (including denying him jobs or trying to kill him). Generally, the individual takes precautionary measures to protect himself from expected attacks on his person. He is defensive, guarded and scans his environment trying to see if other people are doing something that is detrimental to his interests. If he perceives activities that seem aimed against his interests, he feels angry and may counterattack the person he believes attacked his interests (who probably did not attack his interests). He is often accusatory, accusing people of doing what they did not do. Having accused other people of doing what they did not do, they feel resentful and often quarrel with him. Thus, the individual experiences the phenomenon of self fulfilling prophecy: his prophecies that other people are out to get him, when originally they were not out to get him, makes them out to get him. Delusion disorder can affect the individual or members of a family or even members of a group. This is called follies adieu. It is believed that members of a close nit group can influence each other to become suspicious and fearful of other persons by constantly telling themselves that other people are out to get them. In which case delusion disorder is learned? Or is it the case that they inherited common genetic traits that disposed them to delusional thinking and behaving? (Swanson et al explained such paranoid traits as ideas of reference, ideas of centrality, religious reference and so on. Briefly, ideas of reference means that the paranoid person tends to feel that everything going on around him refers to him, such as thinking that the news broadcaster is talking about him; ideas of centrality expands on that theme, such as seeing ones self as the center of every ones attention and ignoring that other people, too, matter, as an example, a certain Nigerian tribe thinks that their issues ought to be in the front burner and talked about by all other Nigerians while ignoring that other Nigerians’ issues also ought to be addressed; religious ideas of reference means that some paranoids are convinced that they are so special that they are the only ones entrusted with God’s message to the world, they want to save the world; CF the idea of the paranoid prophet: many of the religious ministers you see around you, claiming to be able to save mankind, actually have mild paranoia!)
SCHIZOPHRENIA
Delusional disorder is different from Schizophrenia, paranoid type. There are many types of schizophrenia, including paranoid type, disorganized type, catatonic type, undifferentiated type, residual type and so on. Briefly, in disorganized type, the person talks to himself and is disheveled, he is the mad man you see walking the streets; in catatonic type, the individual is withdrawn from the world and is in a rigid, waxy stupor, perhaps sitting in a corner or laying on a bed and refusing to relate to other people; in undifferentiated type, the individual is neither paranoid nor disorganized; in residual type, the individual has a history of schizophrenia but appears to be free of its symptoms at the present time, perhaps he is stabilized on neuroleptic (psychotropic) medications, such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Senequam, Geodom, Thorazine etc. In delusional disorder, generally, there are no hallucinations, whereas in schizophrenia there are hallucinations in one or more of the five senses (auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory etc). The schizophrenic, paranoid type hallucinates as well as has delusions (say, of grandeur and or persecution). Psychosis is characterized by the presence of hallucinations and delusions; in schizophrenia, there is both hallucination and delusion, whereas in delusion disorder there is only delusion but not hallucination. The schizophrenic generally is unable to hold down meaningful jobs, for the mental disorder affects his cognitive processes. The deluded person, unlike the schizophrenic, is able to do what most people can do in society, including hold down jobs except that he has a systematic and fixed delusion in one or more areas of his life. For example, he may be a good engineer yet he believes that his wife wants to poison him or that other people want to kill him. Apparently, delusion disorder, unlike schizophrenia, does not grossly impair intellectual functioning, but mostly affects the individual’s emotional functioning.
PARANOID PERSONALITY
Delusional disorder is another name for paranoid disorder. However, paranoid disorders include a subset called paranoid personality. Personality is the individual’s habitual pattern of responding to his world. Personality is normal if it enables the individual to harmoniously coexist with other people. Personality is disordered when the individual’s habitual manner of relating to other people generates conflict between him and them. In paranoid personality, the individual, for all intents and purposes, is normal except that he or she entertains desire for importance and fears humiliation and fears being taken advantage of by other persons (this is mild sense of persecution.) The paranoid personality is very proud and easily feels shamed when his desired great personage does not seem to behave as such in the public. For example, if he does not do well at school, he looses social face, feels humiliated and may, in fact, drop out of school, so as to go nurse his imaginary important self, rather than expose that self to the public ridicule of not doing well at school. Excessive pride, shame and guilt are products of the individual’s identification with a grandiose, ideal self; those with realistic self structures, normal persons, tend to feel less pride, shame and guilt. Normal human beings accept the activities of the human body, such as defecation and sex, activities that make grandiose paranoids feel shame. The paranoid person is excessively afraid of loosing his independence. He wants autonomy from other people and therefore finds it difficult to loosen up and behave spontaneously and authentically; he is generally uptight, stiff, humorless and guarded. (See Shapiro, Autonomy and the Rigid Character.) Because he protects his independence, does not trust other people and is accusatory, on the job, he has a hard time. In fact he may quit his jobs if he feels that his boss is bossy. No one gets along with him. Whereas he may be brilliant, he is not any ones friend. Examples are Richard Nixon, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, all suspicious paranoid personalities. Paranoid personality does not affect IQ, in fact, some persons with superior IQ, scores above 132, are paranoid persons.
Whereas the deluded person has fixed delusions, and believes them to be true, the paranoid personality merely has suspicions but does not believe in his suspicions. The deluded person believes that other people are out to get him; the paranoid personality suspects that other people may be out to get him. Whereas in delusion the belief is strong, in paranoid personality the belief is mere doubt of other persons’ goodwill towards the individual. The paranoid personality has generalized distrust in other people’s good intentions towards him and believes that other people would not look after his interests and that only he could look after his self interests. Other than this mild distrust of other peoples interest in him, the paranoid personality seems as normal as any one else. This personality type is found in all walks of life, including medicine, engineering, teaching, politics, indeed, he may even be the head of state of his country! (There are other personality disorders, such as schizoid, schizotypal, narcissistic, histrionic, borderline, antisocial, avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive and passive-aggressive; briefly the schizoid person keeps to himself and does not desire social company; the schizotypal person is interested in weird subjects such as extrasensory matters and is generally odd and eccentric; the narcissistic person feels special and wants all persons to admire him and often uses other people to get what he wants and discards them as if they are worthless; the histrionic person seeks attention in a dramatic manner and has no deep love for other people; the borderline person thinks that the entire world exists to care for her or else she threaten to kill herself and often cuts on her body to make people feel guilty and pay attention to her; the antisocial person has underdeveloped social conscience and feels no guilt and remorse from stealing from other people, or even killing people, indeed, he seems to enjoy other peoples suffering and pain; the avoidant person feels inadequate and fears social rejection; the dependent person wants other people to take care of him and feels unable to take care of himself, he is a follower not a leader; the obsessive-compulsive person thinks a lot, as if ideas are put into his mind and he is compelled to think them through, he often acts compulsively; the passive aggressive person pleases other people and does what they asked him to do but resents them for making him be a door mat and gets back at them by being destructive.)
THE SELF CONCEPT AND SELF IMAGE
Each human being has a self. That self is not tangible and no body can see or touch it. The self is conceptual; that is, it is an idea each of us has in his mind. The self is a product of thinking, ideation and imagination. As George Kelly sees it, in childhood, each of us uses his inherited body and social experiences as building blocks to construct a self concept for himself. The self thus is a mental construct, or if you are a behaviorist like B.F. Skinner, the self is a learned variable. Karen Horney believes that each of us constructs a real self and an ideal self for himself. The real self is the reality of the individual, which includes his imperfect body; the ideal self is the self that the individual uses his thinking and imagination to invent, a self that overcomes whatever weaknesses the individual perceives in his real self. The ideal self is a mental construct and does not exist, in fact, yet it is defended and defense seems to make it real in the defenders awareness; if the imaginary ideal self is not defended it disappears. We seem to come to this world with an inherent biological capacity to construct self concepts and then do so in childhood. Once the self concept is constructed, it is translated into a self image and seen in our minds eyes. We subsequently believe that we are our self concepts/self images and defend them, as if our lives depend on them. We are not our self concepts and self images, for we constructed them. We therefore do not have to rigidly believe that we are our self concepts/images; we not to defend them and more to the goals of this essay, we can change our self concepts, from grandiose to humble.
REAL VERSUS IDEAL SELF IN PARANOIA
The term paranoia is derived from Greek. It denotes a person who denies his real self and wants to become a different self, an alternate self deemed better than the real self. In paranoia, the individual judges his real self as not good, rejects it and posits an alternative superior, perfect and ideal self and aspires after becoming that imaginary self. The paranoid person evaluates his real self (his body self) as inadequate, hates and rejects it and uses his thinking and imagination to come up with an alternative ideal self that he wants to become. He then identifies with the mentally constructed ideal self, and since it is not real, it must be defended, and defense seems to make it real in his awareness. The paranoid person always defends his imaginary ideal (superior, perfect) self. He acts “as if” he is that ideal self (which he is not) and he presents that false, perfect self to other people to relate to, as if it is his real self. If other people validate his ideal self, he feels fine and gets along with them; if they do not affirm his ideal self he feels angry with them. He is always quarreling with those who did not recognize the person he wants to become: the grand, all important, special self. Paranoia has to do with rejection of the real self and invention of an ideal self and identification with that ideal self, as if it is who one is, in fact. (What is the real self? I really do not know. Religious persons believe that the real self is spirit. I cannot verify the reality of spirit. Therefore, for our present purposes, the real self is the bodily self. The self that identifies with the human body is distinguishable from the imaginary ideal self; the ideal self is a product of wishful thinking.) The paranoid person obviously is not his mentally constructed ideal self; he is like all human beings and has a real self, which is imperfect; no human being is the all important, all perfect, ideal self that the paranoid person wants to become.
PARANOID FEARS
The paranoid person spends inordinate energy defending that which is not true, his desired ideal, superior self. He is perpetually anxious, afraid that other people would not see him as he wants to be seen, ideal. He wants other people to see him as important and acts as if he is important and is perpetually fearful that they would see through his facade and see the inadequate self he believes is behind the mask of an important self. Generally, paranoid persons, particularly the passive types (aka avoidant personalities) keep away from other people, or relate to other persons from emotional distance, because they feel that if folks get too close to them that they would see through the façade of importance that they present to them and realize that they are ordinary human beings. They are afraid of been seen as ordinary persons; they want to be seen as godlike selves. (In schizophrenia, paranoid type, the individual actually believes himself to be god, or whatever is his conception of an all powerful person. Delusion occurs in other mental disorders. In bipolar affective disorder, mania, the individual generally believes that he is the most famous or richest or most beautiful person in his world; a homely looking woman, in mania will claim to be Cleopatra, the most famous and beautiful woman in the world. In depression there is a false belief that one is the most evil, guilty person in this world and this is delusional thinking. As in all delusional thinking, the belief that one is the most evil person on earth makes the person feel important, for one is saying that one is the most saintly person in the world.)
ETIOLOGY
Etiologically, something made the paranoid to be person feel inferior and he compensated with a desire for superiority. It could be medical disorders or certain biochemical imbalances; in schizophrenia, paranoid type, the current hypothesis is that there is excess dopamine in the psychotic’s brain. Paranoid persons tend to be very sensitive and biology probably plays a role in this disorder. Social factors, such as racism and discrimination putatively play roles in the origin of paranoia; those who were rejected by their society’s dominant persons are likely to reject themselves and aspire after mentally constructed ideal selves, selves calculated to seem like those who rejected them. (In the For our present purposes, the paranoid person feels biologically and or socially inferior; he does not like that feeling and seeks to overcome it through his imaginary all powerful and superior self. The paranoid to be person is so by adolescence, age thirteen; in fact, traits of paranoid personality could be discerned by age six. However, there is late onset paranoia, such as is seen in older persons. When people are old and feel physically and psychologically weak, they may restitute with imaginary sense of power. Old people’s homes are filled with persons with delusions and depressions (among other mental disorders). Traumatic events also elicit temporary paranoia in people. For example, on September 11, 2001, Arab Muslim terrorists attacked Certain drugs, particularly stimulants, such as Cocaine and Amphetamine, tend to alter brain chemistry in such a manner that some persons feel like other people are out to get them. Some persons on cocaine high have been known to feel that the police are out to get them and seek escape by jumping out of second story windows and hurting/killing themselves.
Paranoia is found even in the most normal human being. The disorder is, therefore, on a continuum, from the little of it that obtains in normal persons to what is seen in neurotics (persons with personality disorders) and in psychotics where the disorder is full blown. Many observers have speculated on the etiology of paranoia. Sigmund Freud conjectured that it is rooted in repressed latent homosexuality; he examined just one case, the autobiography of a schizophrenic judge, Schreber, and reached that conclusion. It is true that paranoid persons tend to fear homosexual persons, for those remind them of their weakness, of being feminine. The paranoid already feels weak and wants to seem like a tough person. It is doubtful that paranoia is caused by repressed homosexuality; it probably has something to do with the individual’s sense of weakness and failure in coping with the exigencies of daily living on a tough planet that over tasks his over sensitive body. In other writings, I speculated that paranoia may have something to do with the pursuit of ideals. The paranoid person, I think, sees himself, other people and the world, as they are, as not good enough, and uses his mind to construct ideal alternatives to them and seeks to bring them into being. Karen Horney (Neurosis and Human Growth) made similar observations in her attempt to explain the etiology of neurosis. In effect, the paranoid rejected reality and seeks an ideal alternative of it. Of course, he is going to fail, for reality is not what his mind makes of it. Reality is constrained by the laws of physics, space, time and energy, whereas in our minds we can construct ideal states that are not limited by the laws of physics. We can wish to fly but gravity prevents us from flying. Some persons build castles in the air and no human being can live in those fantasy castles of theirs. Paranoia has something to do with idealization run wild. In my view, paranoids have to be thought to deal with the empirical world via science and technology, rather than dwell in the world of thinking and imagination only, for thinking/imagination tends to lead to fantasy, fantasy now taken as reality and defended by the paranoid person. (If the reader is interested in the causal analysis of this disorder, he may consult psychiatric text books and journals. I find Swanson et al, Paranoia; Meissner, Paranoid Process; Shapiro, Autonomy and the Rigid Character, particularly instructive. I personally believe that genetics and chemical imbalances in the brain have something to do with the etiology of paranoia; however, I will not go into such matters here. This essay is meant to be simple; it is for the general public.)
GRANDIOSITY AND PERSECUTION
Whereas there are many types of delusion disorder, this essay is limiting itself to the persecutory type of it. In this observer’s experience, wherever there is persecutory paranoia there is grandiose paranoia.
My hypothesis is that the sense of persecution is caused by a pre-existing sense of grandiosity. Grandiosity itself is probably the by product of underlying feeling of inadequacy. That feeling of inadequacy is probably a product of inherited biological disorders and or adverse social experiences.
The paranoid person, for whatever reasons, sees himself as not powerful and wishes to become powerful. Not only does he wish to be powerful but to be all powerful. This desire for all powerfulness or grandiosity, I believe, is at the root of paranoia, persecutory type. The paranoid individual wants to seem very powerful, important and indeed superior to other people. He acts as if he is, in fact, superior to other people. The paranoid person has inordinate fear of not seeming superior and powerful in his and other people’s eyes. In fact, he does most of the things he does to seem as superior, powerful and important self. Of course, he is not superior to other people. Desiring superiority and acting as such, he wants those around him to see him as he wants to be seen, as if he is superior to them! That is correct; the paranoid person wants other people to see him as if he is superior to them. He asks other people to accept his superiority to them. As you can easily see, this thought process is irrational hence there is thought disorder in paranoia. How can you ask other people to see you as their superior? Suppose they see you as their superior, let us see the implication of that situation. The mere fact that they judge you as superior to them means that they are in fact superior to you! If I tell you that you are superior to me, that you are god, I have made you superior, I have made you god hence am superior to you, for it takes a superior person to make another person superior. Whoever places you on a pedestal is your superior, for he could bring you down when he likes to do so. When the Pope used to crown the kings of Some observers claim that it is human beings that invented God and projected their wished importance and power to him. Richard Dawkins believes that the belief in God is a delusion, a belief in that which does not exist.
The paranoid person does not appreciate the illogic in his thinking and behavior. He merely thinks it cute to present himself as superior to other people and expect them to do the impossible, accept him as their superior. He then feels angry when other people do not take him as their superior. (As we shall soon see, a certain Nigerian ethnic group presents itself as superior to others and expect them to see them as their superior; this is clearly irrational, deluded thinking and behaving, but its practitioners do not know it!) If the individual assumes his sameness and equality with other people, relates to other people as their equals and respectfully, the chances are that he would not be persecuted by other people. It is when the individual desires to seem superior to other people, relates to other people as if they are inferior to him, hence does not respect other people, that they are likely to resent and persecute him.
My hypothesis is that those who feel persecuted by other people tend to be those who want to feel like they are superior to other people. Those who pretend to be better than other people are resented and persecuted. Wherever there is persecutory paranoia there is false sense of superiority, grandiosity.
If my hypothesis is correct, it follows that to reduce and or eliminate perceived social persecution; the persecuted person/groups must reevaluate his/their self concepts and shrink them, from grandiose to humble level. Those who feel persecuted tend to have grandiose self concepts and need to change their self concepts and now come to see themselves as the same and coequal with all people and treat all people respectfully. If such persons change their self concepts and self images and now see themselves as the same with all people and love and respect all people, they would no longer be resented and persecuted by other people.
This perspective on paranoia seems to make the persecuted, in the language of the victimology, the victim, blameworthy. It would seem to be blaming the persecuted, for, in effect, it says that he elicited his own persecution! This perspective seems to exonerate the persecutor and blames the persecuted. Nothing could be further from the truth than to reach such erroneous conclusion. No human being has a right to persecute another human being. My goal is to enable us see how those persecuted play a role in their persecution but not to minimize the persecution they received. In my view, there are no innocent victims in this world; we are all in this thing together and contribute to our mutual fate. Nothing ever gives one the right to persecute other people, no matter what they do. The phenomenon that I am talking about is akin to what happens when beautiful women dress in skimpy clothes. Skimpily dressed women sexually arouse some men. This is a fact and needs no denial by misguided radical feminists who seem to exist to blame men for all that is wrong with their lives. The men do not have any justification to rape such women just because they aroused them sexually; it is for such men to control themselves. But having said this, it is also for such women to recognize that nude women or scantly dressed women tend to arouse men sexually and not subject men to such unnecessary arousal; they should not tempt their fate. If you make yourself a sex object some will treat you as such, even though they should not. (Islam and its Sharia laws recognize the stimulus-response nature of nude women and aroused men hence require women to properly cover their bodies. However, this would seem to take away responsibility for their behaviors from men. A balance would be for both genders to be mindful of their effects on each other and behave appropriately.) The salient point is that it takes two to be persecuted: the persecuted and the persecutor. The persecuted person’s individual psychology plays a role in his persecution; the persecutor’s individual psychology also plays a role in his persecutory behavior. This essay is not focusing on the behavior of persecutors, or as Eric Fromm would call them sadists.
PERSECUTION REINFORCES GRANDIOSITY
It should be noted that regardless of the cause of the sense of persecution, once it is there, it serves a secondary function for the individual; persecution makes him feel important. If you feel that you are been persecuted, for example, that the government is out to get you, that the police is out to get you, that your ancestors are out to get you, that other people are out to get you, that your wife and children are out to get you, well, you must be very important for all these people to live with one specific purpose: to get you! A sense of persecution makes the individual gratify his secret desire to be very important. Whoever feels persecuted also feels grandiose and his sense of persecution reinforces his underlying sense of exaggerated importance. This is why it is very difficult to give up the sense of persecution, for if one gave it up, one suddenly feels unimportant! Paranoia is one of the most difficult psychopathologies to heal. The madman feels important because he thinks that every person is out to kill him; if you persuade him to believe that no one is out to kill him, his ego is deflated and he feels like nothing. Obviously, he does not want to feel like he is nothing; in fact, it is his desire to be somebody that made him invent a grandiose self and seek to become it.
LOVE OFFERS REPLACEMENT WORTH
If you eliminate the paranoid person’s grandiosity and persecution you must replace them with something else that makes him feel that his life is worth while. In my opinion, we must replace grandiosity/persecution with love for all human beings. When you teach a human being to love himself (his real self, not his grandiose, perfect ideal self) and to love other peoples real selves (not their grandiose selves) he tends to feel worthwhile. Real self worth lays in love for ones self and other selves. Love all people, yourself included, and you feel that your life has value, meaning and purpose. (In a world, as existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre tell us, seems meaningless and purposeless.) Love is the answer for all our human problems. (I do not want to seem flippant in suggesting an easy cure for paranoia. It is difficult to eliminate the paranoid’s sense of grandiosity and persecution; in fact, many therapists tend to give up on paranoids, for it seems that paranoids cherish their illness; they do not seem ready to heal; they seem to prefer their false sense of importance and its allied persecution to feeling humble. I do not know any one who has succeeded in healing paranoid persons, yet. It is very difficult to heal this mental disorder, especially if it is true, as I believe that it, that biology plays a role in it. I will not explore the physiology of paranoia here. I do not want to complicate what I planned to be a pedestrian essay. Nevertheless, let it be said that I believe that all mental disorders emanate from lack of self love and love for other people and that cure for all mental disorders lay in self love and love for all people. But make sure that you know what love is. Love is not affirmation of the false big self. Love is the affirmation of the unified self, the self that sees itself as unified with all selves; that self is a humble self, for it recognizes that it is only a part in an infinite whole. Love is union; hate is separation. A healthy person loves all life and does not separate from any part of life.)
IGBO SENSE OF PERSECUTION
My motivation for writing this essay is my perception that many contemporary Igbo persons feel persecuted by other Nigerians. In their presence, just about all one hears is what other Nigerians did to them. They see themselves as victims and see other Nigerians as victimizers. Such Igbo persons see themselves as innocent and see other Nigerians as evil persons who are making life very difficult for them. Empirically, we can demonstrate that other Nigerians, particularly Hausas, have persecuted Igbos. In the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s etc Igbos were killed in At the end of the war, 1970, many Igbos trooped back to other parts of It is not my intention to verify or deny these allegations of persecution. However, common sense tells us that where there is smoke there is fire. It is probably the case that Igbos are discriminated in My goal is, assuming some external persecution, to find out what role, if any, Igbos play in their persecution. I believe that Igbos play some role in their persecution. How? Many Igbos see themselves as superior to other Nigerians! They, in fact, want other Nigerians to see them as their superior. To ask other people to see you as superior to them, when, clearly, all human beings are the same, is delusional disorder. Igbo average score on IQ tests is the same as the average IQ scores of other Nigerians. (Africans, like African-Americans, generally score lower than whites and whites score lower than Asians. Average for black persons is 85, average for white persons is 100 and average for Asians is 115.) It is delusional for Igbos to fancy themselves superior to other Nigerians. Nevertheless, Igbos tend to want other Nigerians to see them as exalted persons!
I believe that this Igbo arrogance tends to make other Nigerians to resent them and, in some cases, to persecute them. Other Nigerians tend to feel that Igbos do not respect them, which is true, for Igbos are among the most disrespectful human beings on planet earth. The Igbo, in his arrogance, finds it very difficult to use the respectful term sir for other human beings; on the other hand, he finds it very easy to insult other human beings; indeed, it seems that he exists to insult people. When human beings feel that you do not love and respect them, that is, that you do not affirm their humanity, they tend to resent you and some may attack, harm or even kill you. In truth (if you are religious, in God) we are all equal and whoever feels better than other people is resented by them.
CORROBORATING EVIDENCE
I reached some of these conclusions by participating in an Internet list-serve, Naijapolitics. In this Internet chat forum, Nigerians from all walks of life express their opinions on Reading the posts by Igbos left one the impression that they had no respect for other Nigerians and that they assumed their superiority over other Nigerians. In fact, even where it is obvious that the Igbo letter writer is a functional illiterate and probably has low IQ, he writes as if he is better than other Nigerians! You see Igbo mechanics talking down to Yoruba professors! It was the must amazing scenario where those who are decidedly ill educated talk to well educated persons as if they are better than them. That is to say that these Igbos ignore objective evidence that other Nigerians are smart and treat them as if they are not smart. This is the height of arrogance. I believe that such uncalled for arrogance (which, at best, is childish, and worse, is narcissistic) contributes to other Nigerians tendency to hate and persecute Igbos.
In my view, if Igbos want to reduce the level of resentment for them by other Nigerians, they have to change their self concepts and come to see themselves as the same and equal with all Nigerians and respect all Nigerians.
When I made it clear that I do not like the fact that my fellow Igbos were disrespectful of other Nigerians, they saw me as a turncoat, a quisling and redirected their guns to me. They called me every derogatory name they could muster, including calling this Nwadila an Osu. The empty headed chap who called me Osu actually wanted me to accept his assessment of who I am. Why? Because, in his grandiosity, he believed that he knew the truth and I did not know the truth of my own background! This is delusional disorder at work: asking other people to believe what is not true as true; it is the same as asking Nigerians to believe that they are inferior to Igbos when, clearly, that is not the case. Indeed, some of these misguided Igbos looked into my background trying to find untoward events in my life with which they could discredit me with. Like 419 criminals they do not mind digging into folk’s backgrounds trying to bring private matters into the public domain. They have no sense of boundary for what is appropriate for private and public discourse; their intention is to degrade, for they feel degraded; they behave like primitive persons, for civilized persons differentiate private from public matter. One of the more deluded ones among them said that I did not attend the school they believe that I attended. I did not see what the school one attended has to do with stating the truth, as one sees it. One is not particularly proud of the fact that one attended white men’s universities hence does not make much ado about them. One would have preferred to have attended African universities. As it were, they want me to collude with them and validate their delusional belief that they are superior to other Nigerians and because I refused to do so, they saw me as their enemy. Such behavior is very common in psychotherapy. Generally, the client comes to the psychotherapist thinking that the therapist is there to affirm his swollen ego and resents it when the therapist tries to shrink his ego. In fact, many patients terminate therapy because they would rather the therapist told them that they are the superior persons that they want to be, rather than the ordinary persons we all are. The psychotic patient actually could attack, even kill you, if you deflated his grandiose ego and told him that he is no more important than any other animal. The mad man goes about thinking that he is superior to other people and chooses friends who validate his delusion, resents, avoids and attacks those who tell him that his primary problem lies in his grandiose self esteem. Positive self esteem lies in seeing ones self as ordinary, not in seeing ones self as godlike in grandeur. (We do not even know that God exists; whatever we say about God is our own idea projected to him and not self evidently true; seeing ones self as god is seeing ones self as what probably does not exist, at least, not in the manner that we conceptualize him to be.) One is not naïve and understands that human beings resent being psychoanalyzed and given psychiatric labels. Even the certified mentally ill resents psychiatric labels. Those labeled ask who gave the labeler the right to label them. What are his education and qualifications justifying his labeling of them? Those labeled as ill often want to show that the labeler does not have the credential to label them. If they could convince themselves that such is the case then it follows that the label given to them is false and not to be believed. I understand all these behaviors; they are part of the resistance behavior seen in psychotherapy patients. Nevertheless, the cold fact is that most human beings have the ability to observe their fellow human beings; each of us can, more or less, correctly assess other persons’ character structures. Nevertheless, one must be very careful in judging another person/group, particularly if one is assigning a psychological label to them. This is particularly so because all judgments are made from the judge’s ego (ideal). There is no such thing as a totally objective evaluation of other human beings, for we always evaluate from our history and experience and its limited information. Since all judgments are done from the individual’s ego (ideal), hence tainted, it is obvious that all judgments are, ultimately, wrong! This would seem to suggest that we should not judge other people, as Jesus Christ allegedly said (while judging other people!). Be that as it may, we all do judge one another. Hopefully, one’s judgment is not too flawed? I have written down my perception, judgment and assessment of an aspect of Igbo character structure, aware that what I wrote is not the entire truth. And even if there is some truth to what I wrote, I am conscious that some Igbos would resent me for washing their dirty Lenin in public, for bringing skeletons out of their closets. I will take the resentment my seeming negative perception of Igbos generates in some Igbos. One just hopes that in time folk will become less defensive and take the time to look into their minds and ask why they are persecuted by other Nigerians. One hopes that folks would quit only pointing two accusatory fingers at other Nigerians and see the three fingers that point at them, asking them to take responsibility and ownership of their contribution to their fate. Of course, other people contribute to the individual’s fate, for we live in a system where everything affects everything; even the individual’s personality is an adjustment to his internal and external environment.
CONCLUSION
If you love a person, you tell him what you see in him and ask him to correct the weaknesses you see in him. On the other hand, if you do not like a person, you tell him that he is the perfect, ideal person he wants to seem like, but is not. I love Igbos and must tell them what I see in them. My hope is that they would develop insights into their individual psychologies and where they feel superior to other persons, change that neurotic feeling and come to accept the healthy feeling that all human beings are equal. Igbos must learn to respect all human beings: man and woman, black and white, child and adult. My mission is to help Igbos to accept, love and respect all human beings. However, given what I know about human nature, it is probably the case that many Igbos would rather keep their neurotic/psychotic belief that they are superior to other human beings. Those who wish to retain their comforting insanity will probably hate me. Those of us who bring light (knowledge) to darkness (ignorance) are seldom cherished; the world wishes to live in darkness. We must accept the resentment of our brothers for the truth is worth paying that price for it.
I am not naïve to think that the complex creatures called human beings can be reduced to simplistic psychological explanations. I do not pretend to have explained Igbos. I cannot explain Igbos, nor can any one else do so. All I have done is seeing an aspect of Igbo thinking and behavior that seem to arouse other people’s resentment and call on Igbos to change it. (Obviously, Igbos have many admirable qualities, such as industry and competitiveness, but we are not focusing on those in this essay.) It is not for me to change other people. Each person has the responsibility for changing his thinking and behavior; others cannot do so for him. As a social scientist, my job is to observe society (human thinking and behavior) and write about it and leave it to people to make changes, where changes are called for. Make change where change is possible and where not possible live with what cannot be changed and have the wisdom to know the difference.
All perception is projection. The perceiver perceives with his own history and experiences and is seldom objective. My perception of Igbos as arrogant is shaped by my own history and experiences and may not necessarily be correct? If I am wrong, please correct me. Nevertheless, my obligation is to the truth, as I see it, not as you, other persons, tell me that it is. I do not know what the truth is, so are you; none of us knows what the truth is. All we have to go by is the perception of our five senses. I admit that my perception is not necessarily correct but it is the best that I have. I cannot deny what I see and tell you a lie. I see arrogant and disrespectful Igbos and cannot deny that fact and tell you that I see humble and respectful Igbos. If it makes you feel better about yourself, you can tell yourself that I am projecting what I see in me to Igbos, that I am the one who feels inferior and seeks superiority and project my mental status to Igbos. Alfred Adler tells us that all of us, in degrees, feel inadequate and compensate with some drive to superiority. The difference between normal and neurotic pursuit of superiority, according to Adler, is that the normal person works for social interest, whereas the neurotic person works mostly for self interest. If you put your desire for superiority and power to serving other people, that is just about all that can be asked of you, for no one can completely let go of his desire for superiority and power. It takes power to master the exigencies of this world. Our physical and social environments are impersonal and could snuff us out of existence at any moment. Human beings must, therefore, desire some power and superiority in their efforts to master the challenges of nature. The trick is to always bear in mind that all human beings are the same and eschew the temptation to feel better than others when it enters ones mind, as it is bound to do, every now and then.
My perception, though flawed, as is every person’s perception, is that Igbos think and behaves as if they are superior to other people and that this plays a role in other peoples tendency to resent and persecute them. My hope is that Igbos would change their narcissistic (desire for specialness, and seeking of admiration and attention on that basis, and a tendency to be opportunistic and use people to achieve ones goals and then discard them without feeling guilty and remorse for exploiting human beings for ones own good) self evaluation and see themselves as healthy human beings ought to see themselves, as the same and equal with all people and respect all people. As Carl Rogers observed, we must accept each other in an unconditional positive manner. I believe that when Igbos begin to see other Nigerians in a positive light, love and respect all Nigerians and work for Nigerians common interests, rather than put Nigerians down, they would no longer be persecuted in Nigeria. Obviously, in the nature of things, some persons would still hate one despite ones efforts to be good to them. Evil is real. Be that as it may, it is for the individual to do the right thing and leave it to other people to do the right thing (or wrong thing). The only person the individual can change is him, not other people. See yourself as the same and equal with all people and respect them all; resist the temptation to see yourself as superior to other people. Work for public good. Try it and you would experience peace and happiness and engender social harmony.
Further
Adler, Alfred. (1999) The Neurotic Constitution.
American Psychiatric Association. (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition
Freud, Sigmund. Freud’s Analysis of the Autobiography of Judge Schreber. The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud, Ed Ernest Jones.
Fromm, Eric. (1947) Escape from Freedom.
Horney, Karen (1991) Neurosis and Human Growth.
Kelly, George (1955) Psychology of Personal Constructs.
Meissner, William. (1980) The Paranoid Process.
Rogers, Carl. (1951) Client Centered Therapy.
Sartre, Jean Paul. (1958) Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology.
Shapiro, David. (1999) Autonomy and the Rigid Character.
Skinner, B.F. (2002) Beyond Freedom and Dignity.
Swanson, David et al. (1970) The Paranoid.
Uchendu, Victor. (1965) The Igbo of
Ozodi Thomas Osuji September 10, 2006
* I tend to be very hash on me and generalize that trait to other people. I am hash on those most like me; in this order: Igbos, Nigerian, Africans, African-Americans and Americans. I tend to hold myself and other people to ideal standards and am very judgmental when we seem to deviate from that mentally constructed, unrealistic goal of human perfection. I just want you to know that I have insight to what I am doing, here. Is this self hatred? What do you say? Good luck, my friend.
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Posted by Robot| 10.09.2006 00:45