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International Forum of Psychoanalysis

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Individuality, conformity and collective identity

a
Alan Grey
a
New York, USA
Published online: 24 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Alan Grey (1993) Individuality, conformity and collective identity, International Forum of Psychoanalysis,
2:1, 9-12, DOI: 10.1080/08037069308412437

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 Int Forum Psychoanal 2: 9-12. 1993

Individuality, Conformity and Collective Identity’

Alan Grey, New York, USA

Grey A. Individuality, Conformity and Collective Identity. Int Forum Psychoanal 1993;2:9-12.
Stockholm. ISSN 0803-706X
Distinctions are made between defensive, expressive, and affiliative conformity. Although all forms of
conformity play significant roles in the shaping of identity, both for good and for ill, their negative
influence has received most of the attention in contemporary psychoanalytic thought. A treatment
history is presented here to illustrate the constructive possibilities sometimes realized through
expression of affiliative conformity.
Alan Grey. Ph.D.. 147 Mercer Ave.. Hartsdale. N Y 10530, USA
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One stormy morning during World War 11,an aged
Irishman was briskly walking his favorite stretch of
seashore, when he spied a lifeboat surging through
the waves. It was being carried by the tide toward a
section of beach where an angry mob stood hurling
stones at its desperate occupants. From out of the
crowd on shore a voice challenged the old man with
“Come along! Get busy! Grab some rocks!”
Asserting his individuality, the oldster called back
in an offended tone, “I’ll do what I bloody please-
and when I bloody please!” A few moments later he
did pick up a missile and let fly at the lifeboat.
Following his shot with his eye, the old man
wondered aloud: “Are those miserable creatures
German? or English? or. . .” Impatiently the same
voice from the crowd interrupted him with
“What’s the difference? We Irish are independent
and neutral to all others!” “Didn’t I know that!”
muttered the old man. “I simply want to find out
who we’re neutral against.” He was struggling with
the same disturbing thought that has confronted
many a putatively neutral analyst. It is that what
often passes for neutrality is better described as
conformity with a prevailing dogma, one so uncri-
tically accepted as to achieve invisibility.
Yet there are grounds for questioning whether
the old man’s behavior was uncritically conform-
ing. It is not clear, that he heartily favored pelting
the lifeboat as a true expression of his own
individuality, an inclination only coincidentally
similar to what others were doing. Were that the
case, then his deed might be described as one of
I Paper presented at the VII Scientific Conference of the IFPS in
Munich, August 26-29, 1992
expressive conformity. But his annoyance and
questioning could have indicated that he person-
ally opposed throwing stones at Germans, or at the
English, or at anyone. In that case, violating his
own convictions and yielding to social pressures
out of anxiety was defensive conformity, in the
service of group acceptance.
The effort to understand the old man’s action
brings us to the thesis of this paper. It is that no one
can be understood sufficiently for analytic pur-
poses without more inclusive information about
the context in which he or she is functioning. By
context I mean a range of knowledge that goes
beyond immediate behavior, even beyond the
family history, to the Iarger social milieu in which
events take place. Included in that contextual
perspective is examination of the very categories
used in classifying our observations. For instance,
this distinction between defensive and expressive
types of conformity depends on the familiar and
useful concept of defense, one readily absorbed
into an analytic frame of reference. But that
viewpoint approaches the old man from an indivi-
dualistic perspective. Implicitly he is seen as a self-
contained system, whose involvement with others
is confined to the discharge and inhibition of
intrapsychic needs.
Nor is it an accident that psychoanalysis began
with a conception of the adult individual as a self-
contained unit. Only slowly did clinicians recog-
nize relationships between people as important and
even then within the restricted compass of dyads
and family groups. That is because psychoanalytic
premises first were formulated within the cultural
perspectives of a bourgeoisie generated by the
 10 A Grey
European industrial revolution, in reaction against
the communal bonds of feudalism. For that bour-
geoisie, the individual as a separate unit making
autonomous choices became the new shibboleth,
applied notably to entrepreneurial enterprise but
extended equally to such crucial decisions of
middle class as careers, voting, marriage, procrea-
tion. It was only natural for the principle to be
brought into the consulting room by those middle
class members who constituted the population of
patients and analysts. .
As Bellah and his colleagues found in their study
of contemporary American life, there is “a power-
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ful cultural fiction that we not only can but must
make up our deepest beliefs in the isolation of our
private selves” (1 :65). And they identified psy-
chotherapists as among the high priests of this
fiction, for example in the thesis that healthy
development leads to adult autonomy. Actually in
all societies conformity to collective imperatives is
as essential to adult identity as is autonomous
choice (2:46). Very likely our wariness about
collective identity also has more recent sources
besides the industrial revolution, at least for those
of us guided by the humanistic ethics prevalent in
our profession. We are keenly aware of the terrible
sociopolitical abuses committed in the name of
collective identities. There is the bellicosity of
nationalism, the repression of racism, the exploita-
tiveness of class interests, gender chauvinism, and
so forth.
Yet if collective identities can be organized as in-
groups pitted against out-groups, they also can be
defined very differently. To illustrate a more benign
type of collective identity, a social activist, perhaps
a clergyman, can be introduced onto the Irish
beach scene. In conformity with his high calling he
successfully appeals to the mob to save the lifeboat
passengers. Our aged Irishman now is swept up in a
spirit of communion with the priest, with the
foreigners, and with the crowd. His resulting
actions are neither defensively conforming, nor are
they expressively so in the sense of mere coinci-
dence with the behavior of others. He is experienc-
ing ufiliutive conformity, a spirit of close kinship
with others, a communal emotional solidarity.
Lest this scenario seem Utopian, recall the
careers of Mohandas Ghandi or Martin Luther
King, among other charismatic leaders with the
power to evoke affiliative conformity. The pull of
affiliative feelings is part of an essential glue in
Int Forum Psychoanal 2, 1993
everyday social living as well. Intermixed with
expressive and defensive conformity, it preserves
one’s identity and the larger unity of family, of
neighborhoods, and of other collectivities. Not
that the preservation of the status quo always is to
be desired. But recall that the affiliative bondings
inspired by men like Ghandi also produced revolu-
tions. The motives underlying nonconformity can
be understood in much the same terms as are
proposed here for conformity, and are similarly
tied in with issues of belonging and identity. To
overlook those interconnections is to function less
well as an analyst. When democratic inclinations
inspire us to overlook a patient’s social markers,
like class or race, it also tempts us to overlook their
psychological impact.
The intention of the following briefcase presen-
tation is to illustrate how the psychological per-
spectives of both patient and analyst get caught up
involuntarily in Conformity to collective identity
markers.
Four Vignettes from the Analysis of
Owen Ford
I.
At the time of our first interview, Owen already had
completed two years of training in a psychoanalyti-
cally oriented pastoral counselling program. He
explained that he had discontinued his previous
training analysis when his intense anger at the
analyst was called “psychotic rage.” Nor was that
episode the only battle in Owen’s war against
authority. He readily asserted that his only interest
in a training analysis was to fulfill requirements.
Moreover he rejected the idea of a sustained career
in pastoral counselling or in anything else. He also
had earned a reputation for ignoring rules set by his
training clinic, although he did good work with
clients.
Finally, toward the end of that first contact,
Owen summed up things with the observation that
all the male mentors in his life had proven disap-
pointing. This included his formerly alcoholic
father, his favorite teachers, the Episcopalian priest
he had served as assistant rector and, of course, his
previous analyst. My reply was that very likely he
already had doubts about me. Owen threw back
the gauntlet by wondering if I were alcoholic, an
invalid, or both. The matter-of-fact tone of my
 Int Forum Psychoanal 2, 1993
reply to the contrary sufficiently conveyed respect
for his right to challenge me that he decided to
continue treatment with me. But his rebelliousness
already had stirred defensiveness about my own
collective identities as an analyst and as male
mentor.
11.
Surprisingly, Owen was friendly and informative
during our next series of meetings. His history had
begun thirty-five years before, in a town I will call
Sheffield. He grew up there, eventually to become a
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Individuality. conformity and collective idpntity 11
quite sure, since his disclosures were meaningful-
and yet he seemed to reveal ‘them without any
feeling, and without requiring anything from me.
Once stated, the aptness of the observation was
clear to both of us, but my reluctance to sound
critical had arisen to guard against my own ethnic
prejudices. Now Owen unleashed a spate of
memories about his parents’ characterological re-
moteness, camouflaged by his mother always say-
ing the proper thing. From her, Owen learned his
own emotional detachment, breached only in
oppositional behaviour. When this “as if” perfor-
mance failed to be challenged by his previous

personable, widowed Episcopalian priest. No analyst, Owen hardly understood the intense rage
longer resident in Sheffield, he recalled it as an aroused in him, beyond wanting to leave treat-
elegant old town, carefully preserved by its white ment. Now Owen and I could identify a therapeutic
Anglo-Saxon Protestant homeowners, many of objective meaningful to both of us. It was for Owen
whom enjoyed the benefits of inherited wealth. To to leave behind his defensively detached modes of
our second meeting he brought a large old photo- conformity and nonconformity, and to find more
graph album, showing me pictures of several fully expressive and affiliative commitments in
generations of rich and successful Sheffield fore- both work and personal relationships.
bears. Beginning with his father’s generation,
Owen said, the family’s fortunes had been declining
and he wondered what his own destiny would be. IV.
Inwardly I saw Owen as shallow, pompous, and Owen, despised both himself and his father for
overly concerned with social status. His alleged their dependency and ineffectiveness. Both had
worries seemed a device to talk about his privileged yielded to his mother’s manipulations in an endless
background, and conformed to stereotypes about and very fruitless quest for warmth and belonging.
WASPS. Although his behavior was quite irritat- But his mother’s indifference to others and his
ing, I wondered how much my feelings derived father’s apathy toward career and a place in the
from a personal sense of inferiority as the son of a community had consequences extending beyond
Polish-Jewish immigrant, ignorant of his own, their family life. Their shortcomings were an open
probably ignominious ancestry. In that mindset, I secret in town, so that the Ford family failed to
dismissed any further investigation of Owen’s sustain status among the local elite despite their
reported fears about his family’s decline. My inherited credentials. That downward mobility
discomfort was camouflaged behind defensive con- included Owen who found himself most comfort-
formity to the analytic canon of silent neutrality. able at school among blue-collar friends. It took a
long while for me to realize that despite our very
different social origins, both Owen and I shared a
111. sense of social marginality.
The doorway to greater engagement in the To compensate for parental “tackiness” in their
treatment process proved to be my yawns. . home, their dress and their deportment, Owen
Obviously, my need to yawn was directly counter cultivated an outward ease implying that he was
to common politeness, as well as to professional “to the manor born.” He freely acknowledged a
responsibility, especially since Owen was talking wish to re-establish himself at the social level of his
about significant matters. But since I could not grandparents, among the gentry of Sheffield.
understand what motivated this countertransfer- Recalling with pleasure his visits to his elegant
ence behavior there seemed little more to do than to grandmother and her coterie, he savored the term
let it be frankly displayed. Eventually it was Owen “gentry” which I had introduced to hint at the
who confronted the problem directly by asking if I snobbery of his status concerns. That social circle
was bored. Hesitantly I confessed that I was not neither valued intimacy nor offered it to Owen, but
 12 A Grey
it did give him a transitory sense of place among
“the best people,” those educated to a gracious life
style and capable of maintaining it. During child-
hood another important source of security for
Owen had been his religious participation. In
church, the friendlinessof the priest and the appeal
of the rituals had afforded a sense of communion
with higher powers, drawing him toward his
eventual vocation.
While we explored these matters in the consult-
ing room, Owen moved ahead vigorously with
plans to set up a pastoral counselling service in
Sheffield, even renting a small church-owned
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house, centrally located, as his residence. His
success in achieving acceptanceamong local clergy,
professional people, and laity nourished an
increasing confidence that prompted him to de-
scribe his dwelling as “my first real home.” To all of
this my reaction was a mixture of satisfaction and
foreboding. My fears as a Jewish liberal were that
inevitably he would commit himself to a reaction-
ary, even fascistic, way of life. The collective
identity he was establishingcould bring him a sense
of belonging at the expense of elitist prejudices
toward the less fortunate majority.
Actually, as he became more secure, Owen was
less guarded, less oppositional, more flexible. For
instance, he jointed a mutual support group of
Sheffield who’had been raised by alcoholic
parents. It consisted mostly of working class men
Summaries in German and Spanish
Grey A. Individualitit, Konformitat und
kollektive IdentitHt
Es wird zwischen defensiver, expressiver und affiliativer
Konformitat unterschieden. Obwohl alle drei Formen der
Konformitat wichtige Beitrage zur Identitiitsbildung liefern,
was Vor- und Nachteile hat, interessiert im aktuellen psychoa-
nalytischen Diskurs vor allem ihr negativer EinfluB. Am
Beispiel einer Fallgeschichte wird dargestellt, wie die affiliative
Konformitat manchmal konstruktive Miiglichkeiten ersch-
IieOt, wenn sie zum Ausdruck kommen kann.
Int Forum Psychoanal 2, 1993
and women. A blue-collar man he befriended there
moved into Owen’s residence, partly to share
expenses but equally to share companionship.
Moreover, the new counselling service was set up to
be available regardless of creed or ability to pay. It
required Owen to raise funds by circulating widely
and appealing to affiliative sentiments in the com-
munity.
Perhaps his new haircut expressed Owen’s
changing views of himself. Rather long, his hair
was combed in a fashion suited to his role of priest
and counsellor but it also could be worn in an off-
beat ponytail. The hairstyle was a declaration of
individuality that also took accoun’t of situational
expectations, a move away from detached opposit-
ionalism. His newly affirmed collective identity
provided a secure base for further sorting out of his
individuality in working and in loving. But that
story is beyond the scope of this brief exploration
of conformity and nonconformity in the consulting
room. The experience itself had been a mutual one,
providing both Owen and me with opportunities
to re-examine our convictions, affiliations, and
identities.
References
1. Bellah RN, Madsen R. Sullivan WM, Swidler A, Tipton SM.
Habits of the heart: individualism and commitment in American
life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
2. Baumeister R. Meanings of life. New York: The Guilford Press
1991.
Grey A. Individualidad, conformidad e identidad
colectiva
Se hacen distinciones entre defensa, expresih e identidad
conformista. Aunque todas las formas de conformismo juegan
un papel significativo en 10s tipos de identidad-como salud-
ables y como enfermantes-su influencia negativa ha recibido
la mayor atenci6n en el pensamiento psicoanalitico contem-,
poraneo. Un tratamiento es presentado para ilustrar las
posibilidades constructivas que algunas veces se realizan a
travis de la expresion de la identidad conformista.