INTRODUCTION
Hello dear reader. My name is Jordan Reyne, and apart from being a public philosopher, I also grew up in an unsupervised psychiatric ward. Meaning, a narcissistic family system, where those without power are expected to adjust themselves to fit the madness that surrounds them. If your upbringing was similar, you already know the harm such systems do. You might also know their patterns. They run on known patterns of roles, tactics and values, as authors like Alice Miller and Murray Bowen help us understand.
My own role was one you may have experienced yourself. One that is vital to such systems – the scapegoat. The scapegoat is the person who is named “the problem” so the system itself remains uninterrogated. They illustrate one of the tactics such systems rely on: “pathologising non-compliance.” Pathologising non-compliance is used to label those who do not comply to the behaviours such systems demand as “sick.” Such systems actually need someone to blame – because otherwise the system itself might be found lacking.
This seriously sub-par experience gifted me with something though. Something more than the determination to get the hell out of there quickly. It gave me sight and pattern recognition. The work of Jennifer Freyd and Christopher Lasch offer the same pattern recognition – one that shows it is not simply narcissistic family systems that rely on these patterns of roles, values and tactics. It is not only within families that pathologising non-compliance happens. That is because narcissistic systems scale – to the workplace, to institutions, and even whole societies. The narcissistic family system is the most well studied fractal, but they scale up to workplaces, institutions and even, as Lasch suggests, society itself.
That means something important. When societies themselves are narcissistic, as Lasch’s work asserts ours actually is, scapegoats are produced on a larger scale. Rene Girard’s work helps us understand this too – that societies do and will produce scapegoats, to avoid looking at the deeper problems within society itself. The scapegoat’s function, in such systems, is the same as in family systems. It is to bear the burden of blame, so the system itself can carry on unquestioned.
So it turns out that my own observations are not entirely new. My work, which can be found via my podcast, The Loneliness Industry, builds on those who came before me – Miller, Bowen, Lasch, Freyd, and many more. It began with what I now realise is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the dynamics of these systems: the study of loneliness.
It turns out that narcissistic systems do not just rely on the isolation of their members, they actively produce it.
This systemic marker, loneliness, is also widely recognised as one of the defining crises of our time. We know that it harms both our mental and physical health, and even shortens lives. Yet these systems can only remain operational when that isolation persists.
So we are told that our loneliness is a personal failing. That we lack social skills, or behave weirdly. This tactic is called blame-shifting, where the problems invoked by the system itself, are shunted back onto the individual. When we sit in shame, worried that even saying we are lonely will be interpreted as our own lack, we remain unable to confirm one another’s experience. Unable to confirm the validity of our pain.
Which prevents us from challenging the system that produced it.
This is why the systemic roots of loneliness remain deliberately overlooked. As with narcissistic family systems, late-stage capitalist society and its institutions must remain steadfastly blind to how they produce loneliness.
They must also remain blind to the fact that the behaviours it produces are a normal response to an untenable situation. So the “solutions” such systems provide are designed to keep the individual as the locus of blame. They consist of imperatives to strive for the kind of “self betterment” that translates to complying to approved behaviours. Behaviours such as self-monitoring, control of thoughts and actions, and radical individual responsibility. These happen to be the very values that Miller and Bowen indicate as central to the continued functioning of narcissistic systems.
Meaning, in response to the pain the system causes, we are asked to behave more in alignment with what helps those with advantage in these systems to retain it. So what happens in sick family systems, is mirrored by society itself.
Krishnamurti saw this almost a century ago.
“It is no sign of ones sanity to be well adjusted to a sick society” – Krishnamurti.
In our sider society, as in my family home, we are being asked to comply to behaviours that are, themselves sick. Behaviours that continue the cycle of enabling those with advantage to persist in doing damage, and to continue to produce the very same problems they claim are our personal fault. As Antonio Gramsci points out, with his concept of cultural hegemony, the ruling classes can, and do, ensure that the values that keep them in charge seem “normal” and “natural” to us all. We are encouraged to locate the blame within us, so that the system stays the same.
Yet, Thomas Szaz made it clear, there is no actual standard for mental health, as there is for physical health. He too suggests that what is labeled “pathology” often ends up being those behaviours that do not fit with the demands of our society. His point is underscored by Michel Foucault, whose “madness and civilisation” shows how what counts as madness shifts – depending on what the current power structures demand. That means, “madness” is not fixed. It is those with advantage in the systems who decide what it consists of. When maintaining one’s power requires particular behaviours, then those are the behaviours that are deemed to be “acceptable” and “normal.”
You may well be reading this because you have a diagnosis. After leaving the narcissistic system that was my family, I received one too. ‘Complex post traumatic stress disorder’. A disorder that, fortunately, acknowledges the role of the system I was part of, in my behaviours at the time. Interestingly, this disorder still fights for full acceptance in the DSM and ICD, and I suspect that is no accident.
Because the DSM is fundamentally a behavioural manual — one that categorises patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour as disordered, according to the system itself’s own frameworks. This institutionalised disapproval of certain behaviours fits with what I saw in my own family system. Because when narcissistic systems vie for more control of their members, the list of forbidden ways of being often compounds. This is echoed in DSM and ICD, whose list of unwelcome behaviours keeps on growing. With every iteration, more and more actions are deemed unacceptable. More and more responses are pathologised.
I know too, that many who exhibit the behaviours in its pages, find some solace in receiving a diagnosis. We can feel vindicated by the acknowledgment that something truly is wrong. In narcissistic systems, harm is often minimised. We are deemed to be exaggerating, causing drama, or even lying. So those labels can serve to help us feel acknowledged.
But look at the price for that acknowledgment. In order to receive that vindication – that confirmation that something is wrong, that wrong thing must always be YOU. Your pattern of behaviours won’t be seen as a reaction to a terrible environment: they will not be seen as normal, human responses to a system whose very demands are what Krishnamurti labeled sick. Because in order to remain unexamined, the system can never acknowledge you as a symptom of its own failings. You may only ever a symptom of your own wrongness.
Gabor Mate warns us that society is moving towards pathologising human difference. My work takes that a step further. My thesis is as follows: our system is already institutionalising the pathologisation of non-compliance. It is medicalising the blame-shifting the system requires to continue its ongoing harm. The system itself, with the help of its own institutions, has already decided that “normal” behaviour equates to ignoring harm. It demands we continue to function through the pain it foists upon us. It demands we remain productive even as our isolation plagues us. As Sarah Ahmed’s work helps us see too, it demands we continue to perform happiness even as we suffer.
It is not just family systems who do harm and pathologise dissent. When society becomes narcissistic too, the demands are exactly as Krishnamurti asserted. Through the western world, we are being labeled “sick” for refusing to adjust to actual sickness.
My work aims to show the mechanics of that. It aims to remove the blame and shame that have been unfairly put upon us. Through a philosophical and sociological lens, and with a fair amount of humour and satire, I hope to show you, dear reader, that you are not the problem.
Jordan’s podcast “The Loneliness Industry” can be found here:
The Loneliness Industry Homepage:
on YouTube: https://youtu.be/IIgLce957-s?si=FhXxev0cbXUkH-Vz
and on all major podcast providers (including spotify, apple podcasts, castbox etc)
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Mad in the UK hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.
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