The unwanted self: Projective identification in leaders' identity work, Part 3
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created by theconstellinguist on 24/01/2025 at 23:51 UTC*
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The unwanted self: Projective identification in leaders' identity work, Part 3[1]
- *TW**: Normalized, mutually enforced self-loathing based self-harm based in fragilities that have failed to sufficiently integrate, with underlying disability a likely descriptive cause.
1: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0170840612448158
- *Link:** https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0170840612448158[2][3]
2: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0170840612448158
3: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0170840612448158
- *Citation:** Petriglieri, G., & Stein, M. (2012). The unwanted self: Projective identification in leaders’ identity work. *Organization Studies*, *33*(9), 1217-1235
- *Full disclaimer on the unwanted presence of AI codependency cathartics/ AI inferiorists as a particularly aggressive and disturbed subsection of the narcissist population:** **https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer[4]**[5]
4: https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer
5: https://narcissismresearch.miraheze.org/wiki/AIReactiveCodependencyRageDisclaimer
- *TW**: Normalized, mutually enforced self-loathing based self-harm based in fragilities that have failed to sufficiently integrate, with underlying disability a likely descriptive cause.
- *Overidentification can lead to real inflations of the overidentifying’s self when the overidentified have highly visible, high status or intrinsically motivating roles. If someone is extrinsically motivated and view themselves as the same as someone they overidentified with who is intrinsically motivated, for example, this can do profound damage to the overidentified with.**
1. Overidentification is riskier for individuals in highly visible, high status, and intrinsically motivating roles, which offer highly seductive identities for their incumbents‖ (Ashforth et al. 2008: 338).
- *It is essentially self-enhancement, except they hold little to no sway over the person, or the person might not even know about them. It may also be an attempt to avoid the narcissistic injury of admiration by instead identifying with them and making the same choices they did as if this somehow makes them that person despite clear and obvious differences.**
1. In other words, just as overidentification may be a substitute for something that is missing in one‘s life‖ (Dukerich et al. 1998: 254), it may also generate pressure to project aspects of one‘s life into others.
- *Projective identification is the unconscious manipulation of others to sustain a desired identity.**
1. The clinical literature on family therapy has long described projective identification as the mechanism underpinning the unconscious manipulation of others to sustain a desired identity (Waddell 1981).
- *When someone is not able to sustain aggrandized versions of themselves, they may engage in projective identification to keep such self-conceptions at bay.**
1. We postulate that when leaders are unable to sustain such narratives, they are likely to split
off negatively charged self-conceptions—especially those experienced as impinging on the demands of the leader role—and engage in projective identification to keep such self- conceptions at bay.
- *The more focus an organization puts on a person to represent the organization and that referring to them essentially means referring to the organization, the more pressure there is to cut off parts of the self and have a fitting identity.**
- *Discrepant parts of the self are quickly removed and projectively identified onto fitting and convenient others, which may explain why they always keep these people around but never quite resolve the relationship stably and competently.**
1. Whether or not leaders resort to projective identification also depends on the degree of containment provided by followers and other stakeholders in the present. The more focus an industry, organization, or group puts on a leader to be a symbol of the organization, the more pressure there will be on the leader to develop a fitting identity and to project discrepant aspects of the self into others.
- *The way to an integrated leader is through an integrated constituency. The parts of the constituency that have obscenely fragile reactions to certain features of the human identity are responsible for integrating these parts just as the leader is responsible for doing so as well, where often the leader sets the culture but also claims they cut off that part of them due to pressure from below. In the end, a leader is supposed to act like a leader and not be in a consistently codependent and inferiority-based relationship with who they are supposed to be leading. Stably, with confidence, and with a vision.**
1. Finally, scholars might enrich and develop the conceptual framework presented in this paper into a process model—including antecedents, moderators, and outcomes of leaders‘ identity work—that predicts when leaders are likely to develop and claim integrative life narratives and when they may resort to projective identification to disown unwanted portions of their life story.
- *Minimizing projective identification by sending the projections back to the correct source is critical and this is only possible through research and reasoned analysis.**
1. When leaders operate under great visibility and pressure, they will likely need support from responsible followers and outside professionals to minimize the chances that they will unconsciously resort to projective identification and thus experience its consequences.
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