By Kwame Attakora Abrefah (Attorney, Edmonton, Canada)
The “Ghana problem” has confounded scholars and policymakers alike because, despite being endowed with rich natural resources, Ghana is bedeviled by numerous socioeconomic crises. Some scholars have attributed the problem to lack of leadership. Others have concluded that the rampant corruption in the country is the root cause of the problem.
Truth be told, the Ghana problem is neither corruption nor lack of leadership, which are merely symptoms of the underlying problem. The Ghana problem is the pervasive culture of narcissism that exists in the country today. Narcissistic attributes such as grandiosity, entitlement, manipulation, gaslighting, exploitation and abuse have become so pervasive in our culture that every institution is being destroyed by the narcissistic impulse.
The link between moral values and ethical behaviour is unquestionable.
However, the correlation between the narcissism in our politics, workplaces, and families, and our socioeconomic decline remains unexplored. This article examines two themes. First, it offers a cursory review of narcissism, as defined by the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders (DSM-V). Second, it focuses on the manifestation of the narcissism in our country and how it is destroying families, communities, and ultimately our national institutions. The article concludes with a few recommendations to fix the problem.
Healthy self-esteem
A healthy self-esteem is characterised by a balanced and realistic sense of personal worth and competence. It is anchored in self-respect and respect for others. People who have healthy self-esteem tend to be confident, expansive, and accommodating. Further, self-confident people are aware of their own strengths and limitations, and readily acknowledge their shortcomings. Moreover, self-confident people are generally mentally tougher, generous, happier, more optimistic and have better leadership qualities. For example, confident people do not feel the need to be better than everyone. They welcome diverse opinions, criticism, conflict, and inclusiveness to ensure better outcomes. On the other hand, grandiosity or over-confidence creeps into pathological territory of narcissism. The dangers of narcissism in national affairs should not be under-estimated because narcissists thrive on playing people against each other, creating dangerous and toxic environments in families, workplaces, and politics to undermine social cohesiveness and peaceful co-existence.
Narcissism
What are the attributes of narcissism? The DSM-V describes narcissism as: “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. Narcissists tend to exaggerate their talents and expect to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements. They believe they are ‘special’ and unique and can only be understood by or should associate with other special or high-status people.” Further, the DSM-V, suggests that narcissists have impairments in interpersonal functioning because they are unable to identify with the feelings and needs of others. Their relationships are superficial because they are only interested in relationship for as long as they can exploit others. Thus, they will not hesitate to stab their friends in the back to advance themselves or dump them once they are no longer useful. They are manipulative, deceitful, and condescending toward others, while continually attempting to be the focus of attention.
The foregoing description of narcissistic traits provides a valuable analytical tool to understand how this phenomenon is destroying Ghanaian families, institutions, and the political culture. As the family is the foundation of society, it’s instructive to look at how narcissism takes root and creates dysfunctional families. The family is where individuals develop their personality, values, and moral compass. Thus, a healthy family anchored in core values such as respect, humility, love, compassion, interdependency, forgiveness and honesty, will produce well-adjusted children and adults, and consequently, healthy and confident citizens.
On the other hand, dysfunctional families are characterised by greed, hate, anger, manipulation, deceit, gaslighting, abuse and violence. These patterns of dysfunction arise from specific kinds of traumas that involve abandonment, violence, abuse, and neglect. In Ghana, narcissistic fathers are tyrants and bullies. They abuse their spouses and children, while appearing charming, generous, and kind to outsiders to either impress them or to gain respect and recognition. Further, although they are extremely insecure, they mask their flaws and fear of being exposed by demanding perfection from their children. These narcissistic fathers rob their children of their identity, self-worth, and confidence, thereby sowing the seed for narcistic injury or fragile ego. These children will grow up to become tyrants themselves in our institution.
Other attributes of narcissistic fathers are their selfishness and desire for instant gratification. In Ghana, narcissistic fathers often abandon their families, neglect their children, and prefer to hang out with their buddies or girlfriends to brag about themselves. They spend their meagre salaries on booze and on ostentatious goods to show off instead of paying their children’s tuition and other essential family expenses. Children who grew up with abandonment issues are often “people pleasers” or need continuous reassurance that they are loved. They have trouble trusting, are insecure and need to control others through domination and manipulation. Thus, these children will grow up to become politicians, priests, chiefs and public servants and exhibit similar narcissistic traits in their chosen field or occupation.
Similarly, narcissistic mothers are skilled manipulators, deceitful, and extremely jealous. They can make their children and spouses doubt themselves through their self-righteous indignation and gaslighting. Narcissistic mothers want to be perceived as both martyrs and heroes. They want their children to succeed, but only so far as their success reflects well on them. In fact, children, and particularly, daughters of narcissistic mothers, tend to be perfectionists in their misguided attempt to win their mother’s approval.
Like their male counterparts, narcissistic mothers depend on social acceptance and approval to manage their image. They are primarily driven by how they appear, and most importantly, how those whose opinion matter to them perceive them. They tend to dress to fit the role by appearing successful, wearing expensive clothes to impress their neighbours, employers, and others whom they consider worth their time. They put on an air of perfection and a know-it-all attitude; however, beneath the bluster is an intense sense of insecurity and very low self-esteem. They hide their money from their spouses and secretly build houses while expecting their spouses to pay for everything. They are driven by envy, greed, and jealousy. They may undermine their children’s relationship with their father to claim all the credit for their children’s upbringing, which reinforces their need to be seen as heroes or martyrs. Similarly, they alienate their husbands from their extended families, while insisting that their husband’s support be available to their own extended family.
Families with narcissistic mothers often experience high degrees of chaos, disorganisation, confusion, and instability because narcissistic mothers thrive in chaos. Children raised in chaotic families exhibit aggression and have difficulties forming and sustaining healthy relationships, having positive self-esteem and trusting others. They assert control through manipulation, bullying and backstabbing. Like their mothers, they feed off playing people against each other and enjoy creating chaos. These children will grow up to recreate the chaotic patterns in their families of origin, at their workplaces and in national politics.
Whether we like it or not, just like the family, the workplace is another source of primary relationships. And workplaces, like families, can be extremely toxic, oppressive, dysfunctional, and exploitative. In Ghana today, narcissists are running amok at every workplace. They bully other employees, ignore work protocols, and create a toxic and unproductive work environment. Because they are overly envious of people with superior skills, narcissists lie to undermine the competence and integrity of their co-workers, thereby creating a toxic and unsafe space. Because narcissists are selfish and power hungry, they build clandestine relationships with power players and high-status individuals in their organization to snitch their co-workers, sow division and create confusion in their workplaces. While they demand excessive levels of loyalty, praise, and adulation from others, they will readily sacrifice anyone in their way to climb the corporate ladder. They do not engage in problem-solving or collaboration with others because they believe they know it all; nonetheless, they will not hesitate to take credit for the team’s efforts to elevate themselves.
Pervasive narcissism
Pervasive narcissism in the workplace is undermining socioeconomic development. The toxic workplace culture narcissists create stifles productivity, innovation, creativity, teamwork and performance. This toxicity drives good people away from public service. Across the globe, high performing public service organizations are using collaboration and teamwork to improve productivity, efficiency, and service delivery. In Ghana, however, public institutions are being destroyed by the cult of personality, a sense of entitlement, chaos, instability, and indifference to the common interest in both public and private spaces.
Even in our national politics, where our best and brightest are supposed to lead us by making wise decisions, mobilizing and harnessing all talents for national development, a narcissistic relationship has developed between our national leadership and our people. This relationship is based on the benefits each party expects to extract from the other. For the powerful elites, they expect to benefit from both tangible and intangible “goods”: tangible in the form of wealth, and intangible in the form of adulation and power. Adulation fuels their need to feel special and superior. To gain power, they use the people as a voting block and strategic advantage over their rivals.
Relationship
The people also benefit from this relationship. The well-connected few in the political sphere may benefit from “patronage”: for example, by leveraging the relationship to obtain money, influence, and positions. These people are obliged to reciprocate patronal generosity by demonstrating unfailing loyalty to their paymasters. In so doing, they become mercenaries of their powerful patrons. And why not? This form of relationship is precisely what attracts narcissists to the political realm: to be able to “pull the strings” in the dark rooms to satisfy their narcissistic supply because they cannot compete on the basis of integrity and accountability.
Thus, the political relationships today are not necessarily based on the convergence of political ideology or shared values, but on a conglomeration of self-interested people ready to sacrifice each other to advance their own interests. Loyalty, principle, altruism, and decency are rare qualities in our politics, and trust is the scarcest commodity of all. As political relationships become increasingly fluid and transactional, everyone, including altruistic, competent, well-meaning people, are viewed with suspicion and expected to be selfish, greedy, deceitful and manipulative. Anyone who deviates from these expectations is considered weak. For example, late President Mills was considered weak because he was empathetic and authentic.
Ghana’s problem
The Ghana problem therefore stems from the pervasive narcissism at all levels of our society. While successive governments have framed the unethical practices in our public institutions as capacity issues, the destructive influence of narcissism has been overlooked. Until we address the over-arching problem of narcissism in our public spaces, the current culture of mediocrity, shallow values, confusion, deceitfulness and wilful blindness will prevail. We will continue to devalue intellect, hard work, empathy, and collaboration, which are the essential qualities we need to develop.
Today, many people have been compelled to conform to the culture of dysfunction and toxicity for their own survival. The few who resist conformity become the target of malicious attacks. For example, the Finance Minister Mr. Ken Ofori-Atta is on the chopping block for taking courageous action to confront the wealthy grifters who swindled public funds in the banking sector. Similarly, Dr. Bawumia’s superior intellect, humility, and hard work on digitisation and digitalisation of the economy is being belittled, ridiculed, and attacked by people who are jealous and threatened by his accomplishments. Even our well respected leaders such, as Otumfuo Osei Tutu, Yaa Naa, and the Chief Imam, who are fulfilling the important function of peace-making and reconciliation, are being denigrated in the social media by young people who are so disillusioned with our leadership that they don’t trust anyone anymore.
In conclusion, narcissists are terrorists, who, if left unchecked, will destroy every relationship of trust and every institution in the country. Fortunately, the Ghana problem can be addressed if the government provides early family intervention programs such as the “Triple P Parenting” program and revamps the child protection system to alleviate child poverty, violence and neglect. The education curriculum must include mandatory courses on mindfulness and empathy to teach young people the values of compassion and altruism. Further, the school system must incorporate volunteerism as a credit course to inspire communal values. Similarly, recruitment in the public service must be transparent, meritorious and accountable. The culture of lobbying for positions must stop in order to attract high-quality people into the public service. Narcissists have the advantage in lobbying because they are skilled in the dark arts of manipulation and self-promotion. If narcissists are allowed to continue to terrorize the people through lies and fear in public spaces, decency, integrity, competency and trust will flee because the first lie always wins.
