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SUBSERVIENCE CAN BE SEEN AS A disorder of entitlement. Whereas in grandiosity there is self-aggrandizement at the expense of
others who are depreciated, in subservience there is a facade of humility and idealization of others together with self-denigration. An apparent paucity of entitlement often masks self righteous rage and envy. I shall illustrate what I mean by subservience and its rewards with a character from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. I shall also describe some of my own experiences in working with a subservient patient.
By contrast with grandiosity, which I have discussed in an earlier paper (Tenzer, 1987), relatively little attention has been paid in the psychoanalytic literature to self-denigration. An exception is Horney, who describes the unconscious exaltation of inferiority, contemptibility, and submissiveness that goes along with the manifest self-minimizing, self-belittling, and self-abnegation that are the hallmark of subservience. She says that there are "taboos on all that is presumptuous, selfish and aggressive" that result in "a shrinking process." (Horney, 1950, p. 219).
A trial for the analyst is the tenacity with which this shrinking process is adhered to, the self-righteousness it entails, and the resentment it embodies. Lack of entitlement to respect and appreciation, fear of being intrusive and self-effacement are borne in exchange for a heightened sense of moral self satisfaction that is rigidly and humorlessly maintained.
The sort of person I have in mind is epitomized by Virginia Woolf's do-good governess in Mrs. Dalloway. This amanuensis, Miss Kilman, has the kind of implacable subservience that masks inordinate envy and rage. Mrs. Dalloway is described—in contrast to Miss Kilman—as having no bitterness and "none of that sense of m