About Power

Physical | Psychological | Social | Spiritual

The wish for power may be second only to the need for love, and the two often go together. In some cases, the need for power is primary. In its benevolent form, power affords us leadership, protection, and security. In its malevolent form it brings domination or abuse. – Horner, A.

PHYSICAL POWER

PSYCHOLOGICAL POWER

REAL PHYSICAL POWER refers to human physical strength; as applied to groups, it includes military power
APPEARANCE OF POWER: this power shows in the individual’s aspect, heft, physical prowess; it may be augmented by the display of weapons, armor, and other protective gear
BAD USES: physical aggression, physical abuse, coercion by physical force, assault with weapons

REAL PSYCHOLOGICAL POWER is often invisible to the human eye, and requires intelligence, self-assurance, integrity, negotiating skills, and knowledge
APPEARANCE OF POWER: this power manifests itself in interpersonal relationships and in the individual’s aura of well-being; it can be mimicked in acting and pretending, but these are usually detected and unmasked
BAD USES: manipulation, lies, narcissism, emotional abuse

SOCIAL POWER

SPIRITUAL POWER

REAL SOCIAL POWER includes the political power of holding office, the economic power of wealth, the power of social status within a community, and the power of an advanced technology
APPEARANCE OF POWER: this power shows in one’s positive public image; it may also be artificial projected by posturing, false advertising, political propaganda, misinformation, and ostentation
BAD USES: tyranny, exploitation, elitism, gauging, fraud

REAL SPIRITUAL POWER stems from deep, genuine conviction, communicated with sincerity, often with eloquence, and based on universally acceptable principles
APPEARANCE OF POWER: this power may be displayed by living up to one’s convictions, wearing a certain attire, speaking in certain locations, occupying certain hierarchical positions, proselytizing
BAD USES: self-enrichment, hypocrisy, attribution of holiness to violence and abuses

The Wish for Power and the Fear of Having It

Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton. – Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab III.

The wish for power may be second only to the need for love, and the two often go together. In some cases, the need for power is primary. In its benevolent form, power affords us leadership, protection, and security. In its malevolent form it brings domination or abuse. The power differential characterizing the relationship between a parent and a small child is the first and most formative experience with this inescapable dimension of life and of all subsequent interpersonal relationships. Our attitude toward that early experience will determine how we use our own later power (or how we refuse to use it) , and how we react to the power of others—whether we seek it and cling to it, whether we hate and envy it, or whether we rebel against it, overtly or covertly.

The main thesis of Alfred Adler (1930), one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis who broke away from Freud, was that everyone struggles against a felt inferiority and attempts to become superior instead. “To be a human being means the possession of a feeling of inferiority that is constantly pressing towards its own conquest.” The lowered self-esteem may come from some actual physical defect, but it may also come about in normal, healthy development because even the normal child feels small, helpless, and at the mercy of adults in the world in which it lives. A felt physical inferiority, such as short stature, may evoke a need to make oneself “big,” an attitude that is characterized by some as “little man’s disease.” Napoleon is believed to have suffered in this way.

Freud observed this need to tame and channel with respect to aggression, which he considered an instinctual drive. However, it seems useful to consider power as distinct from aggression, inasmuch as they are subjectively and experientially different from each other. People do not say that they feel good when they can be aggressive. They say they feel good when they can experience themselves as powerful. Indeed, they will either bear the guilt of aggression in order to feel powerful or bear the shame of powerlessness in order not to be aggressive.

Intrinsic power is the power of the self, refers to a sense of mastery, of competence, of potency in one’s dealings with the worlds of things and with the world of people. There is a sense of being effective, of having an impact, of mattering. It is the power to think, to feel, to know—to experience the creative workings of the mind. It is the power that comes with access to one’s own will, with a secure sense of oneself and of one’s legitimate place in the world and in one’s relationships—a sense of being a grown-up in a world of grown-ups and of knowing that the only secret is that there is no secret. Those who fully and unconflicted experience their intrinsic power have their feet firmly planted in reality, in contrast to those who try to live out a fantasy existence of illusion—of a grandiosity and omnipotence that cover over an alter-state of worthlessness and helplessness. Real power transcends the whim of chance or of fortune, enabling the individual to persevere and even triumph through adversity.

Source: Horner, Althea (1989). The Wish for Power and the Fear of Having It. J Aronson Inc., Northvale, NJ.