Neville Symington

The false god is not arrived at through thought and reflection. Neville Symington (earlier priest, and later psychoanalyst) comments on the way that the false god is often found in a moment of ecstasy:  Allah was revealed to Mohammed in an ecstatic trance, and, he cites how in the Old Testament Moses leads the people out to meet God amongst peals of thunder and lightening flashes, a dense cloud and a trumpet blast. [Exodus 19: 16-19]. Paul’s Damascene conversion and indeed Pentecost fall into this same category where he sees thought as crushed under the force of the experience.

Symington sees this as a false god that has emerged in the narcissistic part of a person where a wound has occurred, and the god arises, having sustained an infinite insult and takes over the personality:

‘…it deceives the believer into trusting his dictates – the presence of this god …is intrinsically antagonistic to thought…. There is no option than to capitulate in total submission… the action and speech of a person dominated by such a system is false …what is said does not represent the thought of the person. It is a pretend person, something standing for a person that could be there but is not. …this is the false god that exists in individuals governed by narcissism; it is also the god that rules all religious observances of a primitive and superstitious kind.’

Symington sees that this false god is not just to do with religion, it can be found in institutions, and certainly in for example the psychoanalytic community. And I would add often in politics where you can see the ‘blind’ following of someone narcissistic who has set themselves up as god [sadly rather too many of them currently]. The follower appears to be thinking, but rather they have embodied the thoughts of a god as a substitute for their own thinking and creativity. They are also then in a submissive identification with the god. Whilst the identification means the person takes on the ideas of the god and embodies them – the actual messages are often distorted.

The false god embodiment crushes the creativity of the follower – but there can be rebellion. I’m thinking here of people ‘brought up’ in strict evangelical circles, where the punishing false god controls all spontaneity: there is intense submission in childhood and then sometimes a rebellion which can take place when the person is trying to break free from the narcissistic bondage. The rage towards the false god is the projected hatred of being submissive. In truth the person hates having been submissive, but the hatred gets pushed out onto the false god or onto the institution that cultivated it.

‘True liberation requires realization that the enslaving principle is the inner submissive act and total liberation requires an understanding that the enslaving principle is one element in the narcissistic structure.’

The false god is self-damaging and destroys the inner life, and so destroys symbolism – it all becomes very ‘concrete’. The false god demands, and persuades, as the false god says: ‘Do it my way.” Naturally, we are all to different degrees narcissistic – it’s a question of acknowledging and recognizing it!