Reflector

The last sentence supplies the motive and it is not loyalty. A reflector sublates their own will to the endo-ideal in order to avoid guilt, so the arrangement is a trade in which autonomy is exchanged for innocence. That is why the position is attractive rather than merely imposed. Relinquishing control of the will relinquishes responsibility and guilt along with it, and passive interception of anima is the drug that tranquilizes reflectors in the face of atrocities committed by the tyrants they support. The definition gives what the role buys, since being seen as obedient and selfless is what keeps the guilt and shame assignment of the negative image away. Reflectors are therefore neither the victims nor the beneficiaries of the structure but the people holding it up, and Marsh treats their behaviour as an emotional response to fear and guilt that they are not consciously aware of, any more than they are aware of the fear and guilt themselves. The role scales. A reflector at state level or higher is a commoner, and the Duchin formula's idealists and realists are both reflectors differing only in which endo-ideal they face. Two further roles derive from the same mechanism. Reflection directs all empathic conduits at an external endo-ideal, and refraction goes further, redirecting a person's core self so that they give up all autonomy and will to the occupying figure.

Milgram's obedience experiments and Arendt's account of the banality of evil both address how ordinary people participate in harm, and Bandura's displacement of responsibility names the mechanism by which acting under authority removes felt culpability, which is precisely Marsh's trade. Research on authoritarian submission measures the disposition. Where she differs is in making the trade the primary motive rather than a consequence, so the reflector is not obeying and thereby escaping guilt but seeking to escape guilt and finding obedience to be the way, which reverses the usual order of explanation.