PDF Ebook CHARISMA by Charles Lindholm
In 1969 the brutal murders committed in Southern California by the followers of Charles Manson riveted the attention of the American public. The apparently senseless killings of ten people were explained by the media as the result of the strange hypnotic power exercised by Manson, who had convinced the disciples that he was Christ incarnate. Manson, in response, argued that he was nothing more than a mirror, reflecting society's own dark fantasies.
Nearly ten years later, the residents of Jonestown, a commune isolated in the jungles of Guyana, killed a visiting member of the United States House of Representatives and some of his entourage. Then, at the request of their leader, Jim Jones, nearly all of the hundreds of men, women and children of the Temple drank cyanide-laced kool-aid and died in the greatest mass suicide of modern history. At first it was assumed that the suicides were forced, but evidence indicated instead that these people willingly killed themselves and their children in order to accompany their beloved leader, whom they worshipped as a god on earth.
Behind these frightening outbursts lurks the specter of Adolf Hitler who inspired his supporters to similar violent acts, and who also proclaimed himself a living god. But where Manson touched only a few dozen followers, and Jones less than a thousand, Hitler inflamed an entire nation with his paranoid vision, precipitating the greatest war and the most horrible atrocities of the century.
In these terrible events, the concepts of cult, charisma, and diabolical evil seem inextricably intertwined. Our fear of such Hitler-like movements has been reawakened by the rise of religious fanaticism as a mode of government on the international scene, while domestic incidents of mob violence and hatred, as well surges of apparently irrational cultic fervor, undermine our faith in the power of reason. Even within the mainstream of Western society, passionate evangelical figures exhorting their congregations from television screens stir apprehensions about the rationality of the public, and about the possibility of resurgent cultism. Such movements make it hard to believe that human beings—at least human beings in groups gripped by enthusiasm—are reasonable creatures.
In fact, it is evident that leaders such as Hitler, Jones and Manson exert an influence on their followers that goes far beyond ordinary logic or self-interest. Immersed in a crowd that seems to have a dynamic of its own, the followers are completely devoted to their leader and are prepared to do anything he commands—even kill others, or themselves. Meanwhile, the individuals who inspire this incredible loyalty appear to the public in general as extraordinary halfmad figures, driven by violent rages and fears that would seem to make them repellent rather than attractive, while their messages look, from the perspective of the outsider, to be absurd mélanges of half-digested ideas, personal fantasies, and paranoid delusions.
How is it possible to understand these extraordinary occurrences? This question has been one that has fascinated me for a very long time, partly because of the importance of charismatic relations in recent history, partly because of the intellectual challenge such movements offer to social theory. But the problem of understanding charisma and the mentality of the group also has personal relevance because I know something of it from my own experiences, experiences which I share, at least to a degree, with many of my generation.
My first awareness of the raw impersonal power of a group was during student riots in the late sixties. I was momentarily lost in the excitement of a violent crowd, and found myself facing armed policemen, who became in turn an equally angry mob. The riot that ensued was frightening, but also exhilarating, as the participants lost their inhibitions against violence along with their "instinct" of self-preservation in the confrontation. During this same era, I also witnessed the transformation of apparently ordinary, reasonable people into acolytes who wore ludicrous uniforms, practiced odd rituals and proclaimed their exotic leaders to be avatars of God on earth. These devotees told me with their faces shining that they had discovered meaning and great happiness in their attachment to these living deities. Their conversion made me realize that people were not only vulnerable to momentary immersion in a riot, but also to radical involvement in new and completely involving life courses. Reality was far more malleable than I had imagined, and my own perceptions of what was reasonable and rational had to be rethought.
A third factor derived from my travels through South Asia after I graduated from college. My idea was that in a different society, surviving without the baggage of my own identity, I could live more intensely and escape from the alienation I felt from American culture. But I dis covered even more poignantly the degree to which my worldview was limited, and how little I understood the well-springs of people's actions.
This revelation led me to study anthropology in order to learn how to put my experiences of other worlds and cultural standards into social and historical perspective. And, to a degree, this effort was successful. However, when I did my fieldwork in northern Pakistan, I found that the tribal people I worked among, although almost fanatically egalitarian, had periodic charismatic revivals, where nearly the whole population would rise and follow an ecstatic religious practitioner. This made me wonder about the paradoxical connection between egalitarianism and charismatic involvement, and more generally about the role of passion in arousing collective action within a specific cultural context.
As a result of these personal experiences I became interested in the study of charisma as the source for emotionally grounded action. The collective energies and selfless communal fervor I had felt in the riots of the sixties seemed to me to be best understood in terms of the dynamics of a charismatic group, and charismatic leadership certainly had impelled a few of my friends to become immersed in cults. I also believed that it is not through rational argument, but primarily through forms of charismatic commitment, that people achieve the levels of selfsacrifice necessary for revolution and social transformation.
But what meaning did any of this have? Was the word "charisma" just a way to categorize and thereby pretend to capture an emotional experience that is really completely inexplicable? A number of commentators have argued that this is indeed the case—that charisma is actually a meaningless term, completely useless for analysis. Unfortunately, they put nothing in its place, and we are left with the naked events, and bereft even of a word to describe them. The question then is whether we can discover the outline of a theoretical framework within the discourse about charisma that can help us make sense of what appears senseless. We can begin this task by asking just what is entailed in the popular definition of charisma.
Virtually unknown a generation ago, the word "charisma" is now a part of the vocabulary of the general public, and obviously fills a felt need to conceptualize and categorize exactly the sorts of cultic commitments and extraordinary crowd phenomenon I mentioned above. However, its meaning has been extended to cover not only the astonishing commitment of cultists and fanatics, not only the fervor of the mob, but also the adulation offered to glamorous movie stars, exciting sports heroes, and Kennedyesque politicians adulation which goes far above mere admiration of someone with special expertise.
Nor does the popular use of the term stop there. The social theorist Bertrand de Jouvenel echoes mass opinion when he explains that informal relationships in any group are a product of one individual's "naked capacity of mustering assent," a capacity that has nothing to do with position, or power, or advantage, but emanates solely from an inherent personal magnetism (1958: 163). When a such a person enters a room, heads turn, and those who are without this magical attribute press to be close to the one who has it; they want to be liked by her, to have her attention, to touch her. The hearts of the onlookers race when the attractive other comes near. This capacity is thus a quality admired and envied; and imagined, perhaps accurately, to lead to success in love and work. In the West, we define and "explain" this felt magnetic attractiveness of others by referring to it as "charisma".
Even in the most intimate personal relationships the concept of charisma is used, since the powerful attraction of the beloved in the first flush of romantic love is also portrayed in Western popular culture as "charismatic.” The beloved, in romantic imagery, is understood as having the same sort of intrinsic magnetic quality, outside the range of ordinary thought and logic, and is believed by the lover to be special, extraordinary, remarkable in every way. Because of these imputed qualities, the lover wants to obey the beloved, just as the follower wants to obey the leader. The parallel between love and charisma is deep, and I will return to it in the conclusion.
But for the moment, I simply want to argue that in Western culture the idea of charismatic attraction is a way of talking about certain emotionally charged aspects of social interaction, both at the level of mass movements, and in small-scale, everyday social life. At each level, from the personal to the public, there remains the concept of a compulsive, inexplicable emotional tie linking a group of followers together in adulation of their leader, or tying lover to the beloved, which is commonly symbolized in the imagery of charisma.
In my analysis, I accept the subjective validity of these moments—I do not wish to "explain" charismatic attraction as an illusion, or deny it by claiming it to be a reflection of something more fundamental. Instead, my effort will be to understand what involvement in a charismatic movement means emotionally and psychologically for leaders and followers.
There are limits, however. Even though I am an anthropologist, in this book I stay primarily within a Western context, though I do use material from very simple non-Western societies as a base-line for comparison. Cross-cultural research into more complex social formations would indubitably be useful for developing a more complete theory of charisma, but I felt that what was needed first was a model built from the material that is the most familiar to us, and is most readily available.
Secondly, the study is unfortunately quite male-centered. This is a consequence of the ethnographic accounts, which are almost always about male leaders, and because of a male bias in the theoretical and popular models of charisma. The study of charismatic women is a task I have not been able to undertake, though I hope my work will provide a base for later research.
Let me begin then by assuming that popular discourse about the subjective experience of charisma reflects a reality that must be taken seriously. Obviously crucial to this popular imagery of charisma is the presence of a compelling charismatic individual whose innate qualities attract others. This magnetic quality that is the essence of charisma is one that a few people are thought to "have" as a part of their basic character; charisma is not learned—it exists, just as height or eye color exist.
But unlike physical characteristics, charisma appears only in interaction with the vast majority of others who lack it. In other words, even though charisma is thought of as something intrinsic to the individual, a person cannot reveal this quality in isolation. It is only evident in interaction with those who are effected by it. Charisma is, above all, a relationship, a mutual mingling of the inner selves and leader and follower. Therefore, it follows that if the charismatic is able to compel, the follower has a matching capacity for being compelled, and we need to consider what makes up the personality configuration of the follower, and well as that of the leader, if we are to understand charisma.
Content
Acknowledgments
Part I – Introduction
1. Introduction
Part II – Theory
2. Human Beings As They Really Are”: Social Theories of the Passions
- The Triumph of Passion Over Reason: David Hume
Passion and Teleology: The Utilitarians
The Philosophy of the Superior Man: Mill and Nietzsche
Blond Beasts and Rational Calculators
3. The Sociology of the Irrational: Max Weber and Emile Durkheim
- Max Weber and the Charisma of Paroxysm
Emile Durkheim and the Charisma of the Collective
Models of Irrational Attraction
4. Hypnotism and Crowd Psychology: Mesmer, Le Bon, Tarde
- The Self-conscious Charismatic
Crowd Psychology
The “Dream of Command”
Regression and Love in Crowd Psychology
Mass Society: The Age of the Crowd
5. Oedipus and Narcissus: Freud's Crowd Psychology
- Freud's Model of Human Nature
Freud's Crowd Psychology: Love as Abasement
The Narcissistic Appeal: Love as Merger
6 Charisma as Mental Illness or as Resocialization
- Mental Illness and the Charismatic Leader
The Regressed Follower
Sociological Perspectives: The Rationality of Charisma
7. Synthetic Theories of Charisma
- “Thought Reform”
Physiological Theories of Trance and Charismatic Involvement
Modernity and “Other-directedness”
The “Culture of Narcissism”
Escapes from Modernity
Reprise
Part III – Practice
8. The “Possessed Servant”: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party
- The Charismatic Milieu in Germany
Pre-Nazi Charismatic Groups
Hitler's Rise to Power
The Techniques of Frenzy
Hitler's Character
Institutionalized Chaos: The Rule of the Irrational
The Formulation of the “New Man”
9. “Love Is My Judge”: Charles Manson and the Family
- The Cultic Milieu in America
“Outlaw from Birth”: Charles Manson
Becoming Family: Indoctrination and Ideology
The Unprogrammed Man: Manson as Charismatic
The Downward Cycle
10. ”The Only God You'll Ever See”: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple
- The Peoples Temple
“Always Alone”: Jim Jones
“Jim Loves You”: Living in the Temple
“Spiritual Energy”: Jim Jones's Charismatic Appeal
Revolutionary Suicide
11. ”Technicians of the Sacred”: Shamans and Society
- The Shaman and the Modern Charismatic
The !Kung
Pathology and Structure
Part IV – Conclusion
12. Charisma Today
- Public Secular Alternatives to Charisma
Charisma in Religion
Intimate Relationships
The Romantic Dyad
Love versus Charisma
Afterword
Endnotes
Bibliography
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