From the book "Kinds of power : a guide to its intelligent uses" by James Hillman. Copyright © 1995 by James Hillman. Published by Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.
PART 2: Styles of Power
The Language of Power
Control
Office
Prestige
Exhibitionism
Ambition
Reputation
Influence
Resistance
Leadership
Concentration
Authority
Persuasion
Charisma
Rising
Decision
Fearsomeness
Tyranny
Veto
Purism
Subtle Power
p. 95
The Language of Power
The term "power complex" originates with C. G. Jung and appears largely defined in his "Psychological Types," first published in English in 1923. The paragraph reads:
I occasionally use this term as denoting the total complex of all those ideas and strivings whose tendency it is to range the ego above other influences, thus subordinating all such influences to the ego, quite irrespective of whether they have their source in men and objective conditions, or spring from one's own subjective impulses, feelings, and thoughts.
In brief, 'subordination' of any sort arouses the power complex. The definition implies that to assert self over other, whatever that other may be, puts the other down. The key word in Jung's paragraph is "above." The means to rise above may take many paths. Subordination may use force, strength of will, persuasion by mood, logic of argument, conversion by faith, conviction by reason, terror, manipulation, entanglement or deception. Whatever the method, the power complex subordinates to get and stay on top.
These different modes are familiar enough. Anyone who has lived with a moodily depressed spouse, a cunning manipulator or an ugly bully knows intimately what subordination means, and that the superior position seems mainly to define itself in terms of someone or something else becoming subservient.
We are equally familiar with the techniques of subordination going on in our own character structure---thoughts we will not allow, feelings we prefer to keep down, fantasies and habits that may not see the light of day and are judged straightaway as inferior. Whether inner or outer, in self or in others, Jung's idea of the power complex relies on the idea of a superiorly will-powered ego.
In other places, however, Jung goes beyond ego and speaks of a power drive or instinct to power, appropriating the idea, perhaps from Alfred Adler and perhaps also from Nietzsche's will to power. Jung pairs this power instinct with another overwhelming psychic force, sexuality. He contends that power provides the basis of Adlerian psychology, as sex does Freudian. This contrast goes back further than psychoanalysis, back at least as far as two major sins of church morality in the Middle Ages: 'ira' (anger, rage) and 'cupiditas' (desire, lust). These anciently sinful passions have now become the power and sexual drives.
Even further back, in the sense of ever-present, stand two mythological figures, Ares/Mars and Aphrodite/Venus. They, too, are often paired and their stories tell about power and sexuality. Behind modern psychological concepts is a long history, and behind the long history are the archetypal configurations which history clothes according to the fashion of the centuries. The archetypal approach to power and sex says that a human being can never quite control either 'ira' or 'cupiditas' because these explosive drives are where gods dwell. And though we may think the myths are long forgotten and the gods and goddesses dead, they resurrect in the passions of the soul. That our habits are laid out on the lines of mythical grids is an idea that deserves more space and so it will be the focus of Part Three.
Broader than the psychological ideas of power complex and power drive is the word "power" alone, whose rather innocent definition is simply the agency to act, to do, to be, coming from the Latin 'potere,' to be able. The ability to perform work: like electric power and muscle power. In fact, power and energy are both abstractions induced from the performance of work. When something moves or changes in any way, we posit, and then measure, the invisible reason for this alteration as energy or power. More broadly still, power can be defined as sheer potency and potentiality, not the doing but the capacity to do.
The study of the word becomes more interesting as we go back to its Indo-European roots. We discover that the word itself invites the psychological meanings given by Jung. "Power" subordinates, indeed! And even without a subject who uses it. No dominant ego need be assumed. For the root of the word is 'poti' meaning husband, lord, master; Greek 'possis,' husband, from which 'des-potes,' "lord of the house" from 'domos' (Greek), 'domus' (Latin), and 'posis,' master. 'Dominus' (our dominate, dominant) is the lord, the master, the possessor, and Roman slaves called their master 'dominus' as slaves in Greece called their master 'despotes' (from which our word "despot").
Already hierarchy and subordination, even despotism, are built into this idea of power. In the Western tradition---expressed in the language we all inherit the moment we speak English (or any other Indo-European-derived language), thereby entering the cultural field of irrevocable and inexorable history---we believe that agency, to do, to act, involves bossing, dominion, lording it over, pushing things, people, the environment around. God himself in the Latin Church is called 'Dominus,' and we humble humans made in that image become dominators simply by doing something.
The most perplexing question that runs all through this inquiry into power is: how can we exercise power, do anything at all as agents, without dominating? It is the great question of our historical psyche, perhaps of human nature: how to act without dominion, without oppressive control, and yet accomplish. It is the question that arises in parents raising their children, in social workers helping their clients, in managers giving instructions in an office. Wherever we would do something as agents, power appears, and where power appears so does our Western history in the word. We dominate in the image of our God, 'Dominus.'
We can immediately see why political feminism has focused on hierarchical organization as the keystone of "patriarchal consciousness." Hierarchy subordinates; power becomes domination and despotism. So, dismantle the table of organization and the declension of power downward from above. Restructure, either in utter equality or into flexible, cooperative, leaderless groups---production gangs, assembly teams, task forces---so as to remain horizontal and not pinnacle upward.
For this radical shift in direction, sideways rather than up and down, new sins replace the old. Ruthless leveling---no head dare stick up too high. No one to look up to is the price of not looking down on anyone. Respect, admiration, awe go by the board. Other kinds of conformism and political correctness begin to dominate. A new tyranny emerges: the absolutism of equality.
Besides the archetypal struggle for power between the vertical and horizontal dimensions---now personalized into male versus female---another power struggle goes on within the word itself. The history of the term implicates whatever you do, and however you do it in a dualism of active/passive, master/slave, eventually sadist/masochist. Work can happen only at the expense of power required to move inert matter.
This style of thinking about getting things done follows an ancient Western model of matter as mere potentiality, inert, passive, feminine, void. It must be actualized by something superior to it. Subordination again and again, from Aristotle through St. Thomas Aquinas into Newtonian science. Only very recently will we acknowledge the innate power in matter, that it, too, is energy and that things do not require the dictates of a Caesar to get them moving. Where Caesar appears, there comes the inert crowd, the unmotivated mass. Mastery invites slavery of one sort or another, even if it be only the slavery of the material over which you show your masterful productive dominion. Caesar is called tyrant, ambitious, mighty, master, lord, in Shakespeare's play; these epithets of power at the same time reduce the populace to "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" ('Julius Caesar' I, i, 34). The world divides into actives and passives.
The political problems of "crowds and power," as the Nobel Prize-winning writer Elias Canetti described in his classic study, reside in that pervasive idea of power that has Western consciousness in its dominion, an idea which insists that the more lowly and material, the more female and quiescent, the less power; power follows the high road of class, wealth, education, birth or gender. Power stays on top like God in heaven, Moses on Sinai, the Greek gods on Olympus, Jesus on the Mount of Olives, and raised in resurrection, the colonials over natives, whiteness over darkness, and missionaries on top of their women. The philosophical term is 'actus purus,' the most power defined as purest activity. Below is matter, mass, mob---a mere potential needing both to be motivated from its native inertia and yet constrained from spontaneous eruption because of its latent potency. The notion that pure activity is the essence of divinity gives spiritual impetus to the Western worship of productivity, and also to Western machismo, racism, and paranoia.
We can extend the notion of power by investigating beyond the psychological and etymological explorations we have just reviewed and imagining into the common notions that accompany the word. For the term "power" differentiates itself in our minds with a host of shadings in common usage. These different styles of power that we recognize in each other, we also search for or are embarrassed by. I am thinking here of leadership, influence, resistance, authority, tyranny, prestige, control, ambition and the like---aspects of power that we shall soon study. Perhaps these many facets are the components of power, the traits that together compose its force, its ability to act and do, go and get, have and hold, enslave and destroy; perhaps, too, these shadings account for why the idea of power carries such impact and offers such freedom, as well as inflicts such a curse.
As we review the styles of power, we shall mainly be using a 'rhetorical method.' How do we speak about power? How does power speak to us, display itself in language?
From Dictionary Copyright © 2005 Apple Computer, Inc. :
rhetoric
noun
the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, esp. the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.
• language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content : all we have from the opposition is empty rhetoric.
ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French rethorique, via Latin from Greek rhētorikē (tekhnē) ‘(art) of rhetoric,’ from rhētōr ‘rhetor.’
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From Thesaurus:
rhetoric
noun
1 a form of rhetoric: oratory, eloquence, command of language, way with words. See note at paralipsis.
2 empty rhetoric: bombast, turgidity, grandiloquence, magniloquence, pomposity, extravagant language, purple prose; wordiness, verbosity, prolixity; informal: hot air; rare: fustian.
USAGE NOTE rhetoric
Rhetoric = (1) the art of using language persuasively; the rules that help one achieve eloquence;
(2) the persuasive use of language;
(3) a treatise on persuasive language;
(4) prose composition as a school subject. These are the main senses outlined in the Oxford English Dictionary.
There should probably be added a new sense, related to but distinct from the first sense: (5) the bombastic or disingenuous use of language to manipulate people.
Older books defined rhetoric in line with sense 1:
“Rhetoric is the Art of speaking suitably upon any Subject.” (John Kirkby, A New English Grammar; 1746.)
“Rhetoric is the art of adapting discourse, in harmony with its subject and occasion, to the requirements of a reader or hearer.” (John F. Genung, The Working Principles of Rhetoric; 1902.)
But the slippage toward the pejorative sense 5 began early. In “Some Fruits of Solitude” (1693), William Penn suggested its iniquitous uses: “There is a Truth and Beauty in Rhetorick; but it oftener serves ill Turns than good ones.” (Charles W. Eliot, ed., Harvard Classics; 1909.)
By the twentieth century, some writers with a classical bent were trying hard to reclaim the word—e.g.: “No one who reads [ancient authors] can hold the puerile notions of rhetoric that prevail in our generation. The ancients would have made short work of the cult of the anti-social that lies behind the cult of mystification and the modern hatred of rhetoric. All the great literary ages have exalted the study of rhetoric.” (Van Wyck Brooks, Opinions of Oliver Allston; 1941.)
But T. S. Eliot probably had it right when he acknowledged that the word is essentially ambiguous today—generally pejorative (disparaging, derogatory) but with flashes of a favorable sense: “The word [ rhetoric ] simply cannot be used as synonymous with bad writing. The meanings which it has been obliged to shoulder have been mostly opprobrious; but if a precise meaning can be found for it this meaning may occasionally represent a virtue.”
(“ ‘Rhetoric’ and Poetic Drama,” in The Sacred Wood, 7th ed.; 1950.) — BG
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From Dictionary:
rhetorical
adjective
of, relating to, or concerned with the art of rhetoric : repetition is a common rhetorical device.
• expressed in terms intended to persuade or impress : the rhetorical commitment of the government to give priority to primary education.
• (of a question) asked in order to produce an effect or to make a statement rather than to elicit information.
ORIGIN late Middle English (first used in the sense [eloquently expressed] ): via Latin from Greek rhētorikos (from rhētor ‘rhetor’ ) + -al .
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From Thesaurus:
rhetorical
adjective
1 rhetorical devices: stylistic, oratorical, linguistic, verbal. See table.
2 rhetorical hyperbole: extravagant, grandiloquent, magniloquent, high-flown, orotund, bombastic, grandiose, pompous, pretentious, overblown, oratorical, turgid, flowery, florid; informal: highfalutin; rare: fustian.
RHETORICAL DEVICES
allusion ellipsis metonymy
amplification enthymeme onomatopoeia
anacoluthon enumeratio oxymoron
anadiplosis epanalepsis paralipsis
analogy epimone parallelism
anaphora epistrophe parataxis
antanagoge epithet parenthesis
anthimeria epizeuxis paronomasia
antimetabole eponym personification
antiphrasis exemplum pleonasm
antithesis expletive polysyndeton
apophasis hendiadys procatalepsis
aporia hyperbaton prosopopoeia
aposiopesis hyperbole rhetorical question
apostrophe hypocorisma scesis onomaton
appositive hypophora sententia
assonance hypotaxis simile
asyndeton hysteron proteron syllepsis
catachresis kenning symploce
chiasmus litotes syncope
climax malapropism synecdoche
conduplicatio meiosis tmesis
diacope meronym trope
metabasis understatement
distinctio metanoia zeugma
dystmesis metaphor
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back to "The Language of Power" :
As we review the styles of power, we shall mainly be using a 'rhetorical method.' How do we speak about power? How does power speak to us, display itself in language? The rhetorical method differs from the usual ones for exposing a subject. The more familiar methods analyze an idea by looking at examples, or they rely on anecdotes, or they deduce logical implications from definitions, or they employ an empirical study of a case from which to draw useful conclusions. Another method, the more moralistic one, divides power into two basic kinds, the good kind and the bad kind, urging one and condemning the other.
A moralistic model appears especially in theories of power. Judgments are disguised under the cloak of theoretical objectivity. Theories present a spectrum of power stretching from influence (good) to coercion (bad), from persuasion (good) to violence (bad), from legitimated (good) to usurped (bad), mandated by symbols (good) or by weapons (bad), shared and relative (good) to despotic and absolute (bad), located in persons or in social structures. Theories usually start with definitions. Definitions set standards, so that ideas of power can then be measured against benchmarks unidimensionally as if on a scale from one to ten. A theory of power tries to treat it as a defined single something.
We need to unpack this difference between definitions and myths since we will be moving back and forth between them all through this book. Using myths as grids lets you analyze phenomena by holding them up against the light of archetypal figures whose attributes and behaviors are even more complicated than what you are examining. Instead of reducing meaning to a definition, myths amplify and complicate. They are the path of richness. Myths add information to phenomena and offer insights. They provide images, puzzles, humor. For instance, the great hero Hercules, a mythical figure who provides a backdrop for much of our male, muscular, untiring, slaughtering, energetic sense of power, was classically called a "beef eater." Lettuce, in contrast, grew in the gardens of Adonis, the smooth-skinned soft-fleshed lover-boy, and lettuce was considered wimpy and negative for virility because it wilted and went limp fast. This pairing of beef and lettuce provides a mythical background to a cultural shift in the malls. Huge hamburgers are yielding space to salad bars. This pairing appears also in comic reverse in the contrast between Popeye who eats spinach for strength and pudgy Wimpy who lives on hamburgers.
In a curious way, myths provide more objectivity than do models of thought. Even though mythical grids use humanlike figures (Hercules) and speak the rhetoric of subjectivity---passions, feelings, habits and attitudes---their effect is more objective because they do not press a theoretical construction upon phenomena. They leave you free to imagine further about meat eaters and vegetarians, about hunters and planters, about changes in pop-culture tastes, about green environmentalism, about "beef" ads, about heroes and power.
The value of a model lies in setting a standard definition useful for measuring approximations to the model. A hero, according to a full and current definition in the Oxford English Dictionary is: "A man who exhibits extraordinary bravery, firmness, or greatness of soul, in connection with any pursuit, work, or enterprise; a man admired and venerated for his achievements and noble qualities."
Rather than an image, a mythical tale or a depiction, we are given a clear objective abstraction. We have a model against which acts, people and qualities can be compared. By setting conceptual measures, a model imposes subtle judgments even as it pretends to objectivity. Is General Norman Schwarzkopf truly extraordinary? If so, to what degree? Has he greatness of soul? Is Muhammad Ali venerated for his achievements and noble qualities? What about Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Martha Graham, Picasso, Rachel Carson, Lee Iacocca---do they fill the bill? Or a war hero like Sergeant York, an Olympic hero like Mark Spitz or Jesse Owens? We find ourselves measuring, comparing, arguing, dissenting---and especially moralizing about what person, what achievement measures up to the model. Myths don't have this effect. They make us wonder, question and imagine. To take Jesus as model leads to the 'imitatio Christi' and the guilt of never measuring up. To take Jesus mythically leads to mystery.
From Dictionary:
model
noun
1 a three-dimensional representation of a person or thing or of a proposed structure, typically on a smaller scale than the original : a model of St. Paul's Cathedral | [as adj. ] a model airplane.
• (in sculpture) a figure or object made in clay or wax, to be reproduced in another more durable material.
2 a system or thing used as an example to follow or imitate : the law became a model for dozens of laws banning nondegradable plastic products | [as adj. ] a model farm.
• a simplified description, esp. a mathematical one, of a system or process, to assist calculations and predictions : a statistical model used for predicting the survival rates of endangered species.
• ( model of) a person or thing regarded as an excellent example of a specified quality : as she grew older, she became a model of self-control | [as adj. ] he was a model husband and father.
• ( model for) an actual person or place on which a specified fictional character or location is based : the author denied that Marilyn was the model for his tragic heroine.
3 a person, typically a woman, employed to display clothes by wearing them : a fashion model.
• a person employed to pose for an artist, photographer, or sculptor.
4 a particular design or version of a product : trading your car in for a newer model.
ORIGIN late 16th cent.(denoting a set of plans of a building): from French modelle, from Italian modello, from an alteration of Latin modulus (see modulus ).
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From Thesaurus:
model
noun
1 a working model: replica, copy, representation, mock-up, dummy, imitation, duplicate, reproduction, facsimile.
2 the Canadian model of health care: prototype, stereotype, archetype, type, version; mold, template, framework, pattern, design, blueprint.
3 she was a model of patience: ideal, paragon, perfect example/specimen; perfection, acme, epitome, nonpareil, crème de la crème.
4 a model teacher: ideal, perfect, exemplary, classic, flawless, faultless.
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From Dictionary:
myth
noun
1 a traditional story, esp. one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
• such stories collectively : the heroes of Greek myth.
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back to "The Language of Power" :
The mythical approach to our subject, power, means that moralizing about it falls away. This is because the background figures of power---Heroes, kings, giants, ogres, queens, witches, wise women, crones, spirits, daimones and especially gods and goddesses show that there are no absolute good or absolute evil figures. Any god or goddess can be an enemy and a killer. Any form of power can be destructive or constructively valuable. There are abuses of magnanimity and nurture as there are instances of constructive well-being under the harsh rule of tyranny. Yes, there are even benign despots. A benign despot is not an oxymoron: Western history is filled with constructive monsters like the czar who built St. Petersburg, or Napoleon. The bountiful king binds his subjects by his gifts as does the CEO by the opportunities he offers. The good mother provides and foresees and her sons and daughters become more and more passive and dependent, drinking themselves to death. Benign despotism---isn't that what's feared by those who attack the welfare state?
You will find another major difference between what we are doing here and usual critiques and theories of power. The various styles will not be lined up on any systematic thread of theory, from major to minor, from stronger to weaker, from older to newer, etc. We are not laying out kinds of theory but kinds of power. Rather than a 'theory' of power, ours is a 'phenomenology' of power, even a phenomenology of the fantasies of power. 'Phainomenon' = "that which appears to the sense or the mind." How things show themselves; how they light up (with a root in flashing, shining, revealing).
From Dictionary:
phenomenology
noun Philosophy
the science of phenomena as distinct from that of the nature of being.
• an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience.
back to "The Language of Power" :
A phenomenology also supposes that there is no such thing as power per se. It is not an 'is,' or as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, "there is no there there." A phenomenology of power shows no substance with borders that can tell you where power begins and where it leaves off, when it is present and when not. Instead of a sharp definition, we have a family of resemblances (Wittgenstein) among closely related notions and descriptions. A phenomenology of power treats the topic as a bundle of fantasies, of events moving through the mind and the world, the two rather indistinguishable from each other, a protean (ever-changing) shape-shifting, requiring lots and lots of terms to grasp the cluster of notions that our language speaks of as signs of power.
Whatever the method---logical, empirical, phenomenological---we have to use language. A method persuades us by the power of its language, its rhetoric, defined as "the art of persuasion." Therefore, if we can get at the ideas embedded in the language about power, unpack the persuasive ideas that affect our thought and behavior, we shall be as close as we can get to knowing the components of power. All day long terms like "control," "prestige," "ambition," "charisma," "authority" cross our lips without much thought and enter into judgments that determine our decisions, and our relations with colleagues. Since language is our luggage it's useful to open these terms for inspection. Perhaps we'll find smuggled hypotheses and hidden prejudices, but also long-forgotten values we did not know we were carrying.
While psychologies of all sorts are actively concerned with "empowerment" and use the term regularly in conferences and programs, there remains a strange discomfort with the idea of power, not only for the tyrannical implications we have uncovered but for yet another reason. A saying of Jung's expresses this best: "Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking." [C. G. Jung, 'The Collected Works,' vol. 7, sect. 78 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953).]
This antagonistic setup makes one ashamed of the power side of loving (for love exerts a most forceful dominion on whatever it touches); and also Jung's sentence says that to go for power is loveless behavior. They have become mutually exclusive: one or the other.
I think we have in Jung's frank statement the epitome of the romantic view of both love and power. The one all-giving and selfless, the other all-demanding and selfish. The one an expression of soul, the other only of will. And yet we go to workshops to become "empowered"! Perhaps my naming this opposition "romantic" is too confining, since even Machiavelli, the fox of Florence and no romantic, insisted that the soul's domain had nothing to do with the power of princes. Again a distinct separation between an idea of love and an idea of power.
This division leads to the renunciation of power in order to become a nobler, loving soul. Good guys come in last and that's why they are good. Often women are elected or selected because in this opposition they represent soul, not power. So to be disempowered is proof---not of wimpiness and castration necessarily---but of nobility of soul and a loving nature. So, too, idealists and romantics often abjure (solemnly renounce) power. To appropriate (seize) power deserts the soul for dirty politics. Is it power that's dirty, or their 'idea' of power?
Is this why idealists often lose? So often the question is asked: why do people of nobler intention not try for office in the first place, and when they do get to call the shots and find things going against them, they refuse to find a way through by compromising, but resign, riding off on the high horse of indignation? Why can't the good guys get into the gutter, as was said of Adlai Stevenson?
Even more curious: why are the conflicts about power so ruthless---less so in business and politics, where they are an everyday matter, than in the idealist professions of clergy, medicine, the arts, teaching and nursing. Those embattled in academic struggles and in museum and hospital fights deceive, backbite, threaten and maneuver shamelessly. They will not speak with friends of their enemies. Cabals form. Hatchet men appointed. Revenge plotted. Yet in business and politics competitors for much larger stakes still go off to the golf course, eat and drink together. In business and politics, it seems, there is less idealism and more sense of shadow. Power is not repressed but lived with as a daily companion; moreover, it is not declared to be the enemy of love.
So long as the notion of power is itself corrupted by a romantic opposition with love, soul, goodness and beauty, power will indeed corrupt, as the saying goes. The corruption begins not in power, but in the ignorance about it. That's why we are undertaking these psychological, etymological and philosophical explorations. Giving careful consideration to something, sustaining deep interest in it, isn't this love? Maybe, then, what follows is an exhibition of the love of power.
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