Similarly, large groups of people who are economically or culturally dispossessed by changes in their society typically respond by submitting and complying with the expectations of a powerful figure or group, hoping they can continue to belong-just like children who are emotionally abandoned by their families. Notably, a persistent tendency to identify with the aggressor is also typical in children who have been emotionally abandoned by narcissistically self-preoccupied parents, even when there has not been gross trauma. In the moment of trauma, children instinctively submit and comply with what abusers want-not just in behavior but in their perceptions, thoughts, and emotions-in order to survive the assault afterwards they often continue to comply, out of fear that the family will turn its back on them. Ferenczi’s conception of identification with the aggressor, which describes children’s typical response to traumatic assaults by family members, provides a remarkably good framework to understand mass social and economic trauma.
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