An idealized self gets reinforced if the idealized person has power. The psychic echo is certainly influenced by the distribution of power in an interpersonal relationship or group. As I frequently note throughout this book, feedback from another person is often withheld or distorted as a result of power differentials between the giver and receiver of the feedback. However, as the British School so insightfully notes, this distortion does not require threat or even a differentiation in formal power.
The distortion only requires an “apparent” discrepancy in power—as a result of either positive or negative power being projected onto the idealized member of the group. Interpersonal and group analysts from the British School would agree with their colleagues from the American and Continental schools that the command inherent in feedback given by someone with superior power can be coercive in nature and can be enforced with power. The British School observers, however, would suggest that the ultimate impact of this coercive feedback is often unpredictable. We can’t really anticipate or understand what occurs when the coercion takes place unless we are aware of the projections that reside behind the power.
It is important that those in a place to give feedback (holders of Quad Two information) know why they don’t want to give someone else feedback—especially if the recipient of feedback holds more power than the giver of feedback. It is also important for the idealized person in the relationship or group to know why they don’t want to receive feedback from the other person in the relationship or from other members of a group. The potential (and idealized) recipient of the withheld feedback should ask: “Am I holding on to an idealized self?” The potential giver of the withheld feedback should ask: “Have I discarded, isolated or projected aspects of myself onto another person? Do I refuse to give feedback because I don’t want the other person to become real? Would this force me to accept aspects of my own unwanted self?”
