FREE ESSAY ON CHARACTERISTICS OF MASTERS AND SLAVES

CHARACTERISTICS OF MASTERS AND SLAVES

This paper is about the characteristics of Masters and Slaves and the similarities in the
personalities of people like Hitler and Jim Jones, the leader of Jonestown, in Guyana,
where he ordered several hundred of his followers to commit suicide. They, like the
millions of Germans who gave up their lives for their Fuhrer, obeyed. Why?
Rousseau said that everybody emerges out of early childhood either with a slave mentality
or with that of a tyrant. These terms can well be applied to the extremes of two
defensive existential positions, for at about age three the child decides either that he
must submit, be a slave or that he'll have to keep trying to find ways to control others
at all costs, to become a tyrant. Whichever position he settles on henceforth determines
his character and his future attitude in relation to power issues, particularly at times
of physical, or social stress. Of course most of us do also develop the more stable
position: I'm O.K., You're O.K.
As a less dramatic designation, the slave position can be called Type I- unsure, and the
tyrant position, Type II- oversure. Type I are those people who seek strokes from an I'm
Not OK, You're OK (-,+) position. They tend to transact with others from either a
compliant or rebellious Child ego state, sometimes helpless, sometimes bratty. They seek
strokes from people who impress them as having powerful Parent ego states, hoping that it
is such people who can offer them a key to the riddle of existence. In everyday life they
appear as victims or rebels.
Conversely, Type II persons operate from the I'm OK, You're Not OK (+,-) defensive
existential position, having resolved that no one can offer them any hope. Their only
chance for survival in an uncertain world is to stamp it with their personal view of
reality, to convince or force others to participate in their image of the world. So they
operate as oversure acting helpful or bossy. They seek out partners or followers who will
transact with them from a compliant Child ego state, will acknowledge them as Powerful
Parents, and will thereby offer them validation for their grandiose illusion of being
sure. They relate as rescuers but become persecutors when they don't obtain gratitude or
compliance. Finally, they may end as victims.
Both types have a way of finding each other, and up to a point this may be fine, because
they can then indulge in complementary stroking to their heart's content, but if they are
endowed with heavy rackets, calamity may follow.
This is where the issue of rackets comes in. A few light rackets cause no harm, but
heavy, persistent rackets mean that the person is not truly capable of dealing with his
underlying emotions and lacks a solid sense of self. Therefore he is likely to be
excessively needy and overly concerned about validating and reinforcing his defensive
existential position. For it is by means of our defensive existential position that we
ward off the despair that pushes to manifest itself as hopelessness in Type I persons,
and murderous rage in Type II persons. By definition, persons with heavy or 3rd degree
rackets, (that is: thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that lead to the destruction or
confinement of body tissue) cannot stand awareness because they do not distinguish
between feeling and the likelihood of behaving in unacceptable ways. It follows that, as
a defense, they seek and receive strokes for unreal substitute feelings. As a result,
they are never really gratified within themselves.
Both the giving and receiving of strokes are artificially induced and received--like
eating devitaminized food. This only exacerbates the hunger all the more, like drug
addiction that falsely seems to energize while inducing starvation. So the seeds for
mutually killing each other off are there from the beginning even while mutual stroking
is taking place and temporarily appeases both parties.
Although there is probably a fairly even distribution of both character types in the
general population, when it comes to heavy racketeers there appear to be more slave types
than tyrants. It looks as though there is a higher number of extreme Type I persons who
continue to operate, even as grown-ups, with the belief, however illusory, that there is
a way for them to bask in a paradise run by a Father or Mother figure. They seek to
abdicate from the responsibility of sorting the welter of mutually contradictory
attitudes and feelings in themselves and others. In most instances such yearnings remain
manageable as fantasies or acceptable behavior. Usually they get played out in minor ways
with more forceful partners. But there remain the unappeased yearnings to escape from
freedom as described by Fromm in his book by this name. When such persons are offered the
opportunity to be led into a haven of relief from anxiety this looks like an offer they
can't refuse. At last: no more conflict or concern about one's inability to make
difficult decisions.
Here's a Powerful new Parent who can tell them exactly what's right and good and how they
can belong. He seems to offer love and understanding for their craving. To merge with, to
become one with him, as humble members of whatever community he sets up, seems like a
happiness worth sacrificing for. Here come all my money, my relationship with former
friends and family, my autonomy for you, Great Leader who can give me ultimate answers,
who can make me feel good merely by believing in you, and therefore in the validity of
what I'm doing. It is this longing to escape from autonomous functioning that led so many
people to embrace Nazism as the golden hope that would free them from disillusion. People
are vulnerable to the enchantment of promises from persons such as Hitler or Jones. In
childhood these people feel forsaken or overpowered in attempts to experience themselves
as freestanding creatures and therefore substitute illusions and fantasies for
disappointment.
Before Fromm, Dostoyevsky used the Grand Inquisitor (Type II) to critically describe the
Slave (Type I):
So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to
find someone to worship . . . Man is tormented by no greater desire than to find someone
quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which he is born. . Man
prefers peace and even death to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil.
Dostoyevsky also described how such people get themselves bound into a system, pointing
out that:
These pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship,
but also to find something that all would believe in and worship; what is essential is
that all may be together in it. This craving for community of worship is the chief misery
of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of
common worship they've slain each other.
In effect both Fromm and Dostoyevsky describe the need in slave type persons for mutual
racketeering with a great parent that dominates a community of adapted children seeking
the same dogma and the same system of beliefs. Within this setting the slaves develop
pseudo-intimacy by means of Child ego state transactions with each other. It is
pseudo-intimacy because it's maintained by their continued racketeering transactions with
the Parent ego state of the powerful leader.
Time magazine (December 11, 1978) printed some excerpts from Letters to Dad written to
Jones by different followers. They illustrate self-abasement and dependency, increasing
his dominance:
I use to spend money in buying unnecessary things for my grandchildren such as clothes.
Now I want to please you and one way I know is to please the family.
I don't respect Dad the way I should. When I am in a follower role and not in a
supervisory role, I feel threatened that people are against me which isn't true and comes
back to my elitism.
Dad - All I can say is that I am two people right now: one of them is a very humble and
innocent person and the other is a cruel and insensitive person that goes around with bad
thoughts on his mind.
Another fault is that I miss soda, candy, pie, etc. which I shouldn't miss at all. The
way I can prevent this is to work extra hard. 
Father is wonderful, clean, straightforward and supernatural.
I know I still follow you because you have the gift to protect me. I like to look strong
but I know I am weak. (Following, which, the person accepted his order and drank
poison.)
Still, one interesting aspect of such a system is that many individuals actually are more
organized and functional than before entering it. This is because allegiance to the
leader and the group offers a measure of security and freedom; freeing them from dealing
with contradictory or unpleasant emotions. Their Adult appears free, that is, free from
ulterior influence. But actually it is so only at the service of their Child or a
remembered previous Parent.
Their Adult is programmed by their leader's definition of reality and reinforced by the
community. Being free from the anxiety of living freely and taking care of oneself and
others, they think more clearly. Actually it is within a rigidly controlled framework, so
their clear thinking is only on narrow issues. Such persons can often think more
logically than average citizens as long as it is within a concrete context, and so long
as their basic premises remain unchallenged. To this end they reinforce each other in a
mutual belief system, thus reinforcing allegiance to the leader.
Thus bureaucracy within Fascism and Nazism functioned better than under the previous
government. Trains ran on time, shipments to concentration camps were handled with
discretion and efficiency. Similarly, building and agriculture were carried on
effectively in Jonestown. Jones' young lieutenants were able to master intricate
financial transactions and made public statements which seemed clear and honest. From
superficial observation outsiders can believe that members of such a community are doing
better than they did before when they may have felt confused or unhappy and demonstrated
more overtly their unsure character. So investigators from the American State Department
and the Embassy who went to Guyana believed the people at Jonestown were doing fine. They
had become zombies, well functioning ones, but zombies nevertheless. They operated with,
as Dostoyevsky said, a stable conception of the object of life without having to question
it. Even a hard-nosed lawyer like Charles E. Garry got fooled by the appearance of
happiness in a certain proportion of members. After a ten-day stay at Jonestown, he
described it as Paradise on Earth.
The sad thing is that once such a system is established, it feeds on itself and
diminishes even the physical ability of oppressed members to move out and evaluate
themselves or their community from the outside. Boundaries become more and more rigidly
set and impermeable. Outside even those who suffer under the system, because it is the
system that defines their reality and chaos looks like the only alternative, fear
influence or intervention.
Within this tight-knit system a pecking order with sergeants and lieutenants develops.
They become a layer between the Big Parent and the Slaves. In this layer are a few
unskilled Type II (Master) types who joined for opportunistic reasons. But, for the most
part, this layer contains intelligent or crafty Type I (Slave) individuals who continue
to be dependent on the Leader. Rather than becoming rebellious when they are disappointed
with him, their angry Child acts out the anger on lesser Slaves by becoming bossy. They
have internalized a part of the Master's controlling Child or Parent, usually the cruel
persecutory aspect, even before it becomes evident to outsiders. These lieutenants become
secondary Masters, pseudo-Parents, with the drive and permission to lash out at those
beneath, using the justification of obeying orders. They contribute to maintaining the
community's rigid boundary; eventually the whole community receives permission to enact
whatever destructive patterns have existed in the Leader. For a long while these patterns
are hidden even from him, covered as they are with his altruistic and helpful rackets.
Jones was probably suicidal from way back, but his rackets prevented him from knowing it
most of the time.
Which brings us to a description of Jones himself, as a tyrant or Master type. He cannot
simply be dismissed as evil, paranoid, or cynical from the beginning. We need to account
for his rise to power. It's in seeking to grasp the motivations of persons like Jones
that the theory of the substitution factor of rackets becomes so important. At early
stages of his career Jones probably saw himself as idealistic, loving, and devoted to the
welfare of humanity. The trap is that this view of himself was probably based on a love
or benevolence racket. It covered awareness of his inordinate craving to be loved more
than the average, perhaps more than anyone. In type II (Master) individuals such a
craving turns into lust for power. (I'll make you love me, if it's the last thing I do).
Beneath, sit suicidal impulses and/or murderous rage for not having been loved, as he
wanted, perhaps even prior to age three.
One should remember that for a while, Jones' rackets led him to make valuable social
contributions. He fought racism, even to the point of adopting seven different children
of different races, he supported some of his followers and various liberal causes, and he
served effectively for the San Francisco Housing Authority. But as a result of his love
and benevolence racket, he found himself pushed to dish out, and to dish out concern and
love to others while becoming increasingly hungrier and frustrated from not getting what
he truly needed. Whatever he received got deflected to his power hungry Parent rather
than to his starving Child.
Initially he may have experienced excitement, energy and creativity, but as time went on
the abject, needy, rackety strokes from his followers failed to gratify his basic
yearnings. It is no surprise that he was desperate about holding on to Tim Stoen, the
6-year old adopted child, when the latter was being claimed by his own parents. Tim may
have been the source of the few genuine loving strokes Jones received. To reassure
himself that he was not dying of depletion, and to boost his sure attitude, Jones
increasingly was forced to depend on mass rallies, alcohol and pep pills. His emotional
starvation created inaccurate assumptions about being beset with a variety of physical
illnesses. This is a typical syndrome in tyrant types when their sense of sureness begins
to falter. Trying to enforce more control over his followers, he moved from Benevolent
Rescuer (his racket) to Persecutor. While still maintaining a sureracket of what was for
the goodof his followers, he had eruptions of murderous rage; increasingly he experienced
himself as the Victim, even before the self-created calamity closed in on him.
After increasing success in building up followers and admiration, persons like Jones set
them toward destruction within the net of mutually shared magical beliefs in their
community. They start out believing, as do their followers, that they can omni potently
solve the world's problems, if only people will do it their way. This was also Hitler's
stated belief. And this may also be the tragedy of Dederich at Synanon, the one time
effective treatment of heroin addiction, turned authoritarian community. When the magical
process fails to succeed totally, frustration and anger in both leader and followers
develop. Initially, both deny these, lest their airtight system explode the shared
illusion of leader's omnipotence, and follower's newfound effectiveness. Positive mutual
stroking transforms it into negative stroking, particularly by the leaders on the
followers who get blamed for everything that goes wrong. They in turn accept the blame
rather than confront their leader. Where followers challenge or try to defect, the group
literally or figuratively exterminates them. They continue to try to remain tightly knit
in spite of the internal combustion that can cause implosion, or from explosion due to
external intervention. So a given individual can get himself entrapped into a dangerously
violent system through having a confused or frightened Child and even when his Adult is
operational, he may be so enmeshed, it is too late to cry uncle. Then, his best apparent
Adult option may be to go along and save his life - or his relative sanity. These appear
to be improved as long as he stays in the system and does not waste energy fighting.
Typically, individuals like Jones have a talent for distorting and converting ideas like
freedom, responsibility, self-respect, caring, and love. These ideas get co-opted into
representing rackets rather than into representing profound meanings. In hearing such
leaders, it is sometimes difficult to identify exactly how their lofty justifications
don't ring true. Surrender and trust, beautiful in a loving relationship, become
capitulation of a free child to the grandiosity racket of a misguided parent. This sad
phenomenon can be witnessed in certain couples' relationships, families, religious or
psychological movements and, more tragically, in communities such as Synanon and
Jonestown.
Commenting on Synanon, Max Lerner identified the seed of tragedy as lying in the
surrender of individual choice both to the leader's decision and to the group's
pressures. If an individual allows himself to be stripped naked within such a setting,
then he inevitably becomes dependent on the leader and the group for psychological
support. Concluding, Lerner states: We have still to resolve the mixture of authority and
self help that is best for therapy and religion. But until we do, the Buddha's remark on
his deathbed may be worth recalling: Work out your own salvation with diligence.
In hearing of the deaths in Guyana, Rabbi Maurice Davis, who had sold Jones an synagogue
within which was housed the first People's Temple in Indianapolis, said: I keep thinking
what happens when the power of love is twisted into the love of power.
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