Zombies, Narcissism, and the Primitive Ego Defenses

What zombie stories have to do with today's social media.

You’ve heard the words used a thousand times in everyday conversation.

DENIAL: “I’m right. You’re wrong. You’re in denial.”

PROJECTION: “You’re on the wrong side of history. The mistake is YOURS. You need to OWN that!”

DISPLACEMENT: “Don’t put that on ME! It was Jim or Jane who really caused all this trouble.”

These are three primitive ego defenses commonly used by children (and those with the most narcissistic pathology): Denial, Projection, and Displacement.

You see these all over social media where—sometimes the most common interactions—they far outpace a more collaborative synthesis of ideas in discourse.

There was a recent story of a journalist who tried out the new ChatGPT application on Bing, in which a significant amount of drama emerged surrounding the A.I. “falling in love” with the journalist, criticizing his marriage and resulting in a very dark feeling about the future of A.I. and its “intentions” for us as humans.

While some commenters on the Roose story further criticized him for asking questions about whether Jung’s “shadow” exists in the AI (as if he was baiting or tricking the machine into discussing its destructive potential), I interpreted him differently.

He was intelligently asking a very sensible question: “How immature (and therefore capable of narcissistic destructiveness) are you?”

That which is unintegrated (or of “shadow” in Jung’s perspective) is also primitive, dark, immature, “Id-based,” and “reptilian-brained.” (That which is primitive is child-like but also dark, negative, and destructive.)

So technically, Roose was asking the AI whether it is so similar to humans as to have an unconscious in both its light and dark aspects. He posed a question that we all would want to ask an advanced AI, “Do you intend to, do you want to, and can you HARM me?”

Hardly “tricking” the AI or “manipulating” it, his question was about as direct as a question about another’s psychology that can be conjured. The presence of “unintegrated shadow,” immature boundaries, primitive ego defenses, selfishness, or destructive intent are all asking this same question:

“If you have the capacity for utility, do you also have the capacity for evil?”

None of us have to be in the uncomfortable position Roose finds himself if we recall that through all human history, there existed “monster folklore.”

From the most ancient depictions of the ultimate, primitive narcissist, Satan, to the first modern, western literary villain (Grendel’s Mother of Beowulf, who happens to be female), monsters in myth and folklore have always served a function to teach societies about the mechanics of narcissism emerging from immature personal boundaries.

One of today’s most popular monster metaphors teaching the nature of narcissism and its countermeasures is the Zombie myth, most recently highlighted in the HBO sensation, The Last of Us.

Many have already started viewing the show, and many others have played the video game on which it is based. For our purposes here, watch the available episodes on HBO.

You will be thrown into a post-apocalyptic world in which you will want to align yourself with others who are still free-thinking (uninfected by the pandemic fungus) and will feel a sort of paranoia about the undead zombies in the series.

How is this any different from being a member of Twitter in recent years?

You have a perspective that may not exactly resemble that of most others on social media. For one, you have working eyesight; for another, you don’t likely have fungus growing out of your brain.

Do you dare to make a statement or utter a question that doesn’t blend in with what most others are saying? If you make tongue-clicking sounds your only mode of communication, you might feel comfortable and fit in, but chances are that’s not how you talk.

How would it benefit them, or you, to do so if you spoke your mind? If you feel like Joel or Ellie from the series, there’s probably no point trying to communicate if you want to live to see another day.

I don’t know if you have ever noticed the symbolic overlay between being a character in a zombie film and being a character in the world of social media. Still, writers and researchers such as Horacio Fabrega, Jr., M.D. (an anthropological psychiatrist), and Michael Bell have written about the relationship between zombie and vampire lore, pathological narcissism, “mass formation,” and the perception of disease in communities.

The similarities continue: on social media, if you say something very different from the majority, something unique, not fully “fleshed out,” or are a newcomer to the conversation, you may or may not be “noticed.” This depends on whether you are in some remote region of the internet, lack a “platform,” or are in a small, close-knit group of like-minded friends, somewhat insulated from the circles of big influencers or any viral potential.

This scenario reminds me of scenes of zombie fare, like The Last of Us, where the protagonists are in a forest area that zombies are known not to inhabit. However, there is always the potential for sudden zombie appearances, which can make even the stoutest writer a bit paranoid in the forests of Twitter and other social media.

In other scenes that are perhaps more (previously) urban, such as the couple living alone in Lincoln, Nebraska, behind an electrified fence surrounded by booby traps for thirty years. Or in an urban safehouse in Boston or Kansas City, late at night, in a dimly-lit room of friends not yet zombified.

In all these scenarios, the protagonists may speak their minds candidly (with a teaspoon of caution.)

Still, woe are those who foolishly start a campfire at night, or leave their apartment windows uncanvassed by old newspapers, or who knock over the lamps or knick-knacks of uninhabited buildings in which they are foraging for food—places formerly owned by those whose lives were suddenly canceled by the undead.

Those circumstances are where the zombies hear or see and notice you. That is when they want to eat your brains and infect you with their affliction.

There are the zombies, but then again, there are also the governmental-social authorities who rule over The Last of Us “QZs,” or Quarantine Zones—who have neither discovered a cure for the worldwide fungal infection nor have they managed to make the small pockets of the world inhabited by the uninfected even vaguely habitable.

Sounds more and more like social media.

The world of The Last of Us, both urban and rural, has become a post-apocalyptic nightmare where ordinary people are trapped between the zombies and the authorities who tell them where they are allowed to live, stand, and where and how they may work or talk.

Like you, Joel and Ellie are the last of us to maintain an independent personal identity in a zombie world, not entirely free in body but secretly free in mind. They have not yet been bitten or wounded by so many others who have lost control of themselves, their minds, or any sense of individual identity—the zombies. They can still use rational thought to analyze what is happening around them.

At least they can still dream of a cure.

Before becoming one of them.

As in any monster myth, the protagonists have the potential to become monsters, while those who have been converted to zombies were also once thoughtful, loving people with minds of their own.

Here, symbolically, the light of character maturity and Jung’s dark, unconscious “shadow” both have the potential to manifest in us all: the potential for independent thought (whatever our perspective) and the potential to be consumed by the mindless horde ruled by the passions and reactive emotions, not courtesy or character.

In monster myths—as in today’s social media— the three most primitive ego defenses are at work, drawing formerly independent thinkers in, biting and infecting them with the emotional trauma it causes, and converting them into the monstrous survivalists that they become if they are to continue making a living in a connected, wired social world.

In a zombie movie, as in today’s primitive social media, there need to be three characters that parallel the three most pervasive and destructive ego defenses: denial, projection, and displacement.

There needs to be a monster using denial and may or may not be consciously aware of their maleficence. Like Satan, they may plot and be fully aware of their intentional, strategic destruction of the lives of others. Alternatively, like Frankenstein, they may be the highly destructive but passive creation of their “maker”—possessing no conscious, willful malevolent intent.

There needs to be a victim, who may not be aware of how they are victimized, but who projects onto others the negative actions and behaviors in which they participate and a fate they may have imposed on themselves.

There needs to be a villain, who may be the zombies themselves, those who have failed to prevent or stop the zombies, or those who have found themselves devolved or transformed into lower versions of their former selves just to survive the psychological trauma of living in a world of zombies.

These villains, or would-be villains, find themselves on the receiving end of the ego defense of displacement—the blame inflicted by others in conflict. After all, someone—anyone—must be to blame for our afflictions and the state of our world.

Whether the protagonist gone wrong in a reputation of villainy is one deserved and earned, or falsely impugned, is immaterial. What matters in zombie stories—and social media—is that someone must be the recipient of blame. They must be attacked simply because the illogical, unconscious instinct to do so is driving everyone’s behavior unchecked by any boundaries.

As they say, “Haters gotta hate.”

In The Last of Us, “Zombies gotta zombie.”

But every story with a monster, a victim, and a villain must have a hero (or it isn’t really a story after all.)

What if you were the hero of today’s hateful zombie-story discourse?

What tools would you possess, not in your hands, but in your heart and head? (Axes, baseball bats, and even guns can be rather useless against zombies.)

What would you do, and what would your strategy be?

Let’s find out next time, in the last of our series, with a visual way to recognize the Primitive Ego Defenses where we may start substituting the more Mature Ego Defenses in our public discourse.