talks about narcissistic injuries or “narcissistic depletion and rage,” when there is a mismatch between the congregation’s longings and the pastor’s leadership, or even where there is an “unempathic disregard for the pastor’s personhood.”23 If the self of pastor or parish is weak, and they are not shored up with loving relationships, then “depressive withdrawal and lifelessness” may follow, for either pastor or parish.24 I know of a person who withdrew from a church for over a year, complaining of too many names on the mailing list and other obscure matters, but never telling the pastor what her real complaint was. She maintained a relationship with a previous pastor and waged an angry campaign against the current pastor from a distance, writing a negative letter to the district superintendent and broadcasting a passive-aggressive public letter full of vague complaints, never mentioning the pastor but praising a ministry in the church run by someone else. Somewhere underneath all this bluster and hostility was undoubtedly some legitimate need, but it was never expressed.
The problem is not narcissistic needs, since we all have them. The problem is “archaic needs” (stemming from childhood) that are not expressed in an adult and rational manner. A wise “pastor attempts to help them gradually transform these immature structures into internalized, empowering, creative-productive ambitions and goals.”25 I read this to mean that the keys are maturity and transformation, with ethics being implied. To make self psychology useful for me, I need to heighten the key themes of ethics, maturity, and transformation, and occasionally use more colloquial terms such as “control freak” or “a complete transformation of attitude.” I think most readers have some idea of what those terms mean. I can understand that a clinical psychologist would want to be more precise, to identify which of the three narcissistic needs is being frustrated for a particular individual, but I think most of us care less about that than about whether the person’s behavior is considerate and respectful of others. Is the person mature or not? Is the person experiencing spiritual transformation or not? These are the key questions for most of us.
Self psychology may help us to recognize that all people have selfish needs, and thus get us to recognize the gray area in human affairs, but sometimes we need to sharply distinguish between black and white. Sometimes we simply need to know whether or not it is safe to talk to a person, whether that person will become enraged by any attempt to have a dialogue.
Rediger’s much less clinical approach may be helpful here. Rediger speaks of a sequence of “agendas” or psychological needs. At the bottom are a person’s survival needs, where feelings are dominant; above that are identity needs, where thinking is dominant; the highest level is relationship needs, where thinking and feeling can be integrated.26 There are negative and positive emotions on each of the three levels. When one’s survival feels threatened, one feels fear. When one’s identity is threatened (often the case when attacks take place in church), one feels anger.27 When relationships fail, one feels sadness. To some degree, Rediger’s three levels can be made to correspond to the three different narcissistic needs of self psychology: the survival level pairing with the need to be praised, the identity level corresponding with the need to have an idealized caretaker, and the relationship level to the need for fellow thinkers. But again, it seems clear that, for practical purposes, we can focus primarily on the need for maturity, ethics, and transformation.
There can be no transformation for an unreflective person, someone who sees no need to change. The narcissist refuses to accept that there is any problem with his/her behavior or thinking. If members of a congregation are growing spiritually, the stagnant narcissist will stick out like a sore thumb. Only in a spiritually crippled congregation can a narcissist fit in nicely and not be recognized by others as someone who is not experiencing growth and transformation.
1. Bandy, Road Runner, 89–90.
2. McGrath, “Bread and Bullying”; “Exploring Our Matrix” blog entry for December 16, 2013.
3. Parker, “Twelve Reasons Why It Is Good to Be a Church Bully” on the site “The Millennial Pastor.”
4. Ibid. The article is followed by a helpful conversation among many participants.
5. Haugk, Antagonists in the Church, 25–26.
6. Maynard, When Sheep Attack!, third page of the Introduction, no page number given. Maynard’s website is Episkopols.com.
7. Maynard, When Sheep Attack!, 13.
8. Ibid., 114.
9. Ibid., 103–5, 110, 113.
10. The noun huios, “son,” without any article, should be translated “a son.” The NRSV gives this as a marginal translation in Mark 15:39 and Matthew 27:54.
11. Erikson, Identity, 70–71.
12. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, from http://www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/dsm-iv.html.
13. Randall, Pastor and Parish, 13–14.
14. Ibid., 34, 46.
15. Kohut, Analysis of the Self, 4; Randall, Pastor and Parish, 78.
16. Rediger, Clergy Killers, 123.
17. Ibid., 85.
18. Randall, Pastor and Parish, 118.
19. Ibid., 40.
20. Ibid., 117.
21. Ibid., 105.
22. Ibid., 108.
23. Ibid., 127.
24. Ibid., 122.
25. Ibid., 156.
