Melancholic Leadership
Reflections on leadership that occurs when we fail to mourn a loss
This short essay reflects on an excerpt of a book chapter, published in 2018, on Melancholic Leadership. We invited authors from across the globe to reflect on leadership in their country/region and authors Zachary Green and Cheryl Getz titled their USA chapter ‘Mourning in America: Leadership in the Divided States of America.’ Later in the book I wrote an analysis reflecting on how the USA was an example of Melancholic Leadership and then expanded the thinking more generally.
Since publishing this six years ago the world has moved on, and I would suggest that Melancholic Leadership has gained ground. Melancholic leadership is an approach that avoids mourning what is really lost e.g. status, empire, stability, solidarity; covering this over with manic behaviour and nostalgic ideas of past greatness. Working through a mourning process whether as a family or a nation is necessary in order to face the reality principle (Freud) and then building a better future in solidarity and from the place we are, not where we dream of being.
Excerpt from Global Leadership Perspectives
“The title of the USA chapter ‘Mourning in America’ points to what I refer to as Melancholic Leadership. Drawing on Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia (1917) melancholia represents a failure to fully mourn a loss, “the melancholic does not consciously know what he or she has lost in losing the object”.
In the USA, Messiah leadership has long been a dominant force, individualism plus heroic struggle and courage underpins the American Dream, yet when this dream fades Messiah leadership becomes infused with melancholy. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 represents this Melancholic Leadership in the USA (Western, 2016). Trump acknowledged the great loss of the American Dream in his successful Presidential campaign saying ‘America is broken’. However, what is ‘lost in losing the object’ is not acknowledged by Trump. Trump’s Messiah leadership approach in his campaign created the ideal of him alone as the saviour of the USA. The lone-hero riding in on the white horse to ‘make America great again’ and ‘drain the swamp’ of the corrupt elites, and be ‘the greatest jobs President ever’. This is a refusal to mourn the loss of the American Dream, and perhaps to mourn the demise of its recent empire too. Without mourning a loss, and then rebuilding a life that recognises and embraces the loss, melancholia will set in. This means that an unconscious attachment to the lost object cannot be let go. Whilst consciously the loss is known, unconsciously the loss is not acknowledged.
Freud’s famous paper also observed that melancholia can have a manic side to it, which is another way to avoid facing the reality of what has been lost. This mania was very present at Trump’s rallies and in his excess in language and tweeting. To renew and regenerate, the reality principle must be faced, the loss of the American Dream and the empire it once had needs to be mourned. Without this collective mourning process people will follow a melancholic leadership that is in denial. The Democrats led by Hilary Clinton in the last election also engaged in this melancholia, claiming things were not so bad and more of the same would mean a brighter future. Together they both engaged in Melancholic leadership in different ways and both were in denial. Melancholic Leadership represents a symptom that leaves the USA in an unresolved place today, and we are witnessing the challenges that are arising from this position of denial.
Melancholic leadership beyond the USA
Looking at all 20 of the chapters in this book, and drawing on experience in the field, I believe that Melancholic Leadership is a very common, yet hidden leadership theme. I am not referring to a leader’s personal melancholy, but a melancholy that reflects cultural situations where collective and social loss takes place and where a leader galvanises support and influences others on the basis of the melancholic dynamic. The unconscious repression that ‘protects’ the individual’s conscious ego from facing the impact of a deep loss is fairly common in organizations as well as nation states. For example, leaders of family businesses or firms with charismatic founders, can be caught in a mesmerised trap of over-identifying with the founding idea or founding individual. If the current leadership galvanises support on the basis of this founding idea/individual, yet doesn’t face new realities that demand new leadership and new ideas and change, they end up running the company on nostalgia and with Melancholic Leadership.
There is a further danger that Melancholic Leadership turns its nostalgia for a utopian past into a paranoia that blames a ‘bad other’ for preventing the recovery of the lost object, and a utopian past. Immigrants or the hidden forces within are then identified as hate objects that are stealing the pleasure (Stavrakakis, 2007) of those who are failing to mourn loss. In the USA, this narrative is unfolding as the symptom of Melancholic leadership underpins the Presidency of Trump and his followers.
When Melancholic Leadership is identified, the work can then commence to build the emotional containers in which the mourning process can begin, thereby liberating the leaders and others to imagine and create new futures. New futures that accommodate the loss after a period of grieving.”
To cite: Western S (2018) USA: Melancholic Leadership pg 271-272 in Western S. & Eric-Jean Garcia (2018) Global Leadership Perspectives: Insights and Analysis, Sage pub
One final reflection is that Melancholic leadership can be seen also as a response to the bio-diversity loss and the inability to mourn and face up to what we have done, and are doing to the environment and our planet. “Drill baby Drill is a classic melancholic defence against mourning.
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