Endo-ideal sublation

Two ways exist to lose your will to an endogroup and this is one of them. Marsh separates endogroup sublation, in which will is given up to the group itself, from endo-ideal sublation, in which it is given up to the idealized figure at the centre. Both are forms of traumatic bonding and both are typically produced by initiation. An initiation rite extracts anima from the person being initiated and distributes it to the endogroup including the initiate, which builds a strong group animus at the cost of the individual one. In both cases the person loses their own will, and what differs is where the will goes. The distinction has consequences for how the bond breaks. A will sublated to a group survives the removal of any particular leader, since the group persists, while a will sublated to a figure is exposed when that figure falls, which is why the collapse of an endo-ideal produces crises of a specific kind and why regression to an earlier circle of self commonly follows. It also affects how someone might be reached. Appeals that work on a person bonded to a group differ from appeals that work on a person bonded to an individual, and Marsh's advice about locating a person's dominant endogroup before attempting anything else depends on knowing which of the two is operating.

Traumatic bonding was named by Donald Dutton and Susan Painter to describe attachment forming under intermittent abuse, and Stockholm syndrome covers similar ground in popular usage. Research on coercive control and on high demand groups, from Robert Lifton's work on thought reform onward, describes initiation, isolation and the surrender of judgement. Freud's account of the leader taking the place of the ego ideal is the nearest theoretical parallel. What Marsh adds is the split. Most of this literature treats bonding to a group and bonding to its leader as one phenomenon, and separating them gives different predictions about how each ends and about what would reach someone in either state.