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The Dark Side of Mentoring Explaining Mentor-on-Mentee

Aggression
Article in The International journal of applied philosophy · January 2009

DOI: 10.5840/ijap20092315
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The Dark Side of Mentoring:
Explaining Mentor-on-Mentee Aggression.
Richard T. McClelland
Gonzaga University
Abstract: Recently available social scientific evidence suggests strongly

that harmful aggressive behavior by mentors aimed at their mentees
(mentor-on-mentee-aggression, or MOMA) is a common occurrence in
such relationships. This paper seeks to characterize such aggression and to
account for its persistence by means of confluence of three etiological per-
spectives: ethological (mentoring as a form of “alloparenting” and as a form
of coalition building), broadly evolutionary (MOMA as a form of “handicap”
attaching to the bonds that constitute mentoring coalitions), and psycho-
dynamic (MOMA as a function of “normal narcissism”). The net result is that
MOMA is an expectable feature of most mentoring relationships.
Introduction:
T here are probably very few professionals who have not benefited from good
mentoring during the course of their personal and professional formation.
Social scientific studies indicate that professionals who are mentored effectively
during the course of their early careers tend to achieve advancement faster than
those who are not, to rise farther in the organization’s hierarchy, and to gain fi-
nancially faster.1 Many of us have also benefited personally and psychologically
from the good work of our mentors. Those relationships will often have been
of substantial duration and may have constituted emotionally intense arenas
in which we have successfully resolved our struggles with some of our deepest
personal issues. Without powerful and influential mentoring, few of us are likely
to have gotten where we are today. It is also true that many of the social institu-
tions in which we have spent our working lives—schools, colleges, universities,
professional training institutes, churches, hospitals and the like—have often
benefited substantially from the mentoring that is carried out, either informally or
formally, under their aegis.2 Moreover, in higher education, mentoring is virtually
universal and is widely regarded in a very positive light. Educators are encour-
aged to mentor their students, their junior colleagues, and even (though rarely)
©2009. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 23:1. ISSN 0738-098X. pp. 61–86
62 Richard T. McClelland
their administrators and trustees. In the tradition of pedagogy to which my own

university belongs, it is quite common to understand mentoring as fulfillment of
the duty to care for the whole person (to exercise a cura personalis). In this context,
also, mentoring is almost universally held in high esteem.
It is my intention here to enter some caveats about the practice of mentoring.
There is another, much darker side to mentoring, one that has only just begun to
enter the relevant social scientific literature, and one which, in my judgment, it
is urgent to acknowledge, to explore and to explain. Writing in 1983, S. Merriam
noted that: “there are no studies which attempt to document the prevalence or
seriousness of the negative effects of mentoring. . . .Only successful mentoring
relationships have been reported” (170). And yet, fifteen years later, Scandura says
that “dysfunction has received only scant research attention” (1998, 450). This
darker side of mentoring involves what I will call “mentor on mentee aggression”
(MOMA), which is often very destructive. Explaining fully any such very complex
form of human interaction is, of course, a task well beyond the range of a single
essay. My concern here is limited to offering a conceptual framework for MOMA
that shows it to be expectable in the context of most mentoring relationships.
The Phenomenon:
Aggressive human behavior comes in a wide variety of types. Its scope varies
from individuals to large social groups and even nation-states. It ranges from
relatively benign, well-sublimated and socially acceptable actions, to malign
and even gross violations of human dignity and rights. Its intensity is clearly a
degreed property. Its motivations are likewise various and can have their own
internal complexity and structures. It is not, in my view, possible (or desirable)
to define aggression by means of necessary and sufficient conditions. Klama put
the point succinctly:
“Aggression” is not a single thing, nor yet a single class of things; it is not a single
behavior pattern, nor yet a single class of behavior patterns; rather, it is a single
term, with a great variety of possible uses and misuses. (1988, 152)
By extension, neither will it be possible to give a succinct definition of MOMA.
However, it is possible, in my view, to give some further indications as to proto-
typical features of MOMA, and the following cases are offered for that purpose.
(Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblance” might also be useful here. It is a
further matter, of course, whether the concepts are themselves prototypes.)3 Each
is a case known to me personally, having encountered it either in the course of
my ordinary academic duties or in psychotherapeutic practice. I have altered
identifying information to preserve confidentiality.
Case One. A young graduate student of theology in a prominent European
university was working under the supervision of a senior scholar in her field,
a person she had chosen because she admired the qualities of his scholarship,
and because of his high professional reputation. After some months of diligent
research, she brought to her mentor a proposal for her dissertation. The topic in
question involved research on the influence of certain concepts from ancient Stoic
The Dark Side of Mentoring: Explaining Mentor-on-Mentee Aggression 63
physics (especially their theory of mixture) on some theological debates among

early fourth-century (CE) Greek Christian writers. To her dismay, her mentor
poured scorn on her proposal, arguing that it was “really a non-starter” that was
unlikely to lead to any significant results. Faced with this response, the student
reluctantly abandoned her research on this topic and moved on to others.
Approximately six months later, the mentor played host to an international
conference in his area of expertise (the philosophical background to early Christian
doctrine). He encouraged his student to take part in the conference, which she did.
On the last day of the conference a young German scholar presented a paper on the
very fourth-century debates with which she had been concerned. In the discussion
following his paper, this scholar mentioned that in his view the most important
missing piece in this stretch of doctrinal historiography was a thorough study of
the influence on it of ancient Stoic theories of mixture. Our student was appalled to
listen to her own mentor heartily concur in this judgment. At no time did the men-
tor give the slightest sign that his earlier advice to his own student had sabotaged
a very promising project, one likely to have made her reputation in the field.
Case Two. A young lecturer in a university in a major American city (let us call
him Peter) became attracted to the traditions of contemporary psychoanalysis,
and began to take courses through the extension division of a local psychoanalytic
training institute. Peter quickly came to the attention of two of the senior train-
ing analysts in the institute, both of whom encouraged him to seek full formal
psychoanalytic training (itself a long and expensive undertaking). In due course,
Peter applied for admission to the institute’s core training program. He asked
one of these two mentors to write a letter of recommendation as part of this ap-
plication. The mentor complied, and sent a copy of the letter to Peter. The letter
recommended Peter highly to the institute for his intelligence and promise as a
clinician. But the letter also noted that Peter had very little formal clinical experi-
ence. This was quite enough to insure that admission was denied. What Peter
did not know at the time, but discovered later, was that the senior analyst who
wrote this letter regarded himself as a gate-keeper.4 Gate-keepers often behave
very aggressively towards those whom they perceive to be “upstarts,” especially
younger persons seeking entry into a new professional area or who threaten the
dominance of the gate-keeper in the professional milieu. Peter’s mentor did noth-
ing that was distinctly out of the ordinary for a gate-keeper.
Case Three. In another academic case, a young philosopher (let us call him
George) was invited to be part of a summer research seminar supervised by a
senior philosopher of international reputation in the area of relevant specializa-
tion. Things went well, and George eventually produced a paper of some merit
for the seminar, one that was eventually published. Now, it happened that at this
time George was looking for a regular academic position, having been working for
some years in an adjunctive position. At the completion of the seminar, the senior
scholar volunteered to write a letter of reference for George, with a view to helping
him find a regular job (or so he said). Surprised, but also pleased at this unsolicited
offer, George agreed to have the letter written. The senior scholar insisted that
the letter be kept confidential and that he would send copies of it directly to any
institutions to which George might apply. Two years went by, and George was
still in his temporary post, several promising alternatives having passed him by.
One day, an unsolicited copy of the letter arrived at George’s office, apparently
having been sent there by its author. George read this letter with dismay, for it
proved to be a complete hatchet job: largely ignoring George’s actual academic
record, the author went on at length about himself and the prestige of his own
university appointment, and concluded by saying that in his opinion George
might just possible be suited for a position in some community college or other.
The letter virtually guaranteed that George’s applications to the institutions who
had seen it would go nowhere. (Not long after deleting this letter from his dossier,
George succeeded in securing permanent academic employment.)
Case Four. A young scientist (let us call her Rachel), working in the labora-
tory of a senior scientist, conceived an idea for a paper in their common area of
investigation. Under the supervision of the senior scientist (let us call him Mike),
Rachel wrote her paper and sought its publication in one of the leading journals in
their field. An earlier project had developed in a similar fashion and had met with
signal success in terms of its publication. That success encouraged Rachel to offer
her second paper for publication. Mike also explicitly encouraged her to do so.
This second paper itself was rather daring, trying out some highly original ideas
about the phenomenon under examination. However, the paper was eventually
rejected by the journal’s editors who wrote a scathing review in which they called
special attention to elements of the paper which in their view made it unsuitable
for publication anywhere. Discussing these results with Mike, Rachel was told,
quite calmly, that it was the result he had expected. Indeed, it turned out that the
mentor, in this case, had deliberately let the paper go forward believing that this
was the likely outcome. His professed reason for doing so was “to bring her down
a peg or two.” Rachel, daunted by the seniority of her mentor, and even more
daunted by her affectionate regard for him (for he had done much to encourage
her professional growth and development, in earlier stages of their association),
did not challenge the set-up which she had unwittingly walked into. But neither
did she undertake any further research projects under Mike’s supervision.
Case Five. An older graduate student, Alice, had after much effort completed
a piece of research her supervising mentor had praised highly when discussing
it with her directly. However, the supervisor wrote an email to another profes-
sor denigrating the same piece of work and indicating that this graduate student
had, in his view, no future in the profession. Unfortunately, Alice had access to
this particular email account, having been given it as part of her normal duties
as her mentor’s research assistant. It was therefore virtually certain that at some
time or other she would see the offending email message. The resulting situation
became very tense, for Alice was on the verge of completing her graduate studies
and stood in great need of her mentor’s support in seeking funding to extend her
scientific career. Alice had also hitherto held her mentor in high esteem and did
not know how to resolve the conflict of her idealization of this person and her
rage at his duplicity. Neither, of course, did she know which of her mentor’s two
opinions to treat as genuine.
Discussion:
In these cases we see a variety of aggressive actions carried out by mentors against
their mentees. Now, of course, mentoring is in many respects an inherently ag-
gressive enterprise, and not all aggression is deleterious. Mentoring often requires
that the mentor challenge the views and practices of their mentees, and there is
likely to be a good deal of argument and counter-argument in their exchanges.
Moreover, mentees in many respects are agreeing to engage in such aggressive
encounters when they enter into such relationships. However, the type of aggres-
sion I am considering here is of a more particular kind: it is harmful, whether by
deliberate and conscious intent, or unconsciously. Some of the harm that is done
is emotional, for mentees often idealize their mentors, and as of a result of this
and other dynamics, are often deeply attached to them. For this reason, in my
experience, it is not uncommon for mentees, when confronted with the evidence
of their mentor’s aggression, to deny that any such aggression has occurred or that
any aggressive motives have operated. It is similarly common for aggression to be
disguised by the language or other devices by which it is carried out. Destructively
aggressive mentors sometimes actually believe that what they are doing is for the
good of the mentee, or for the good of their profession. Mentoring relationships
are also often the scene of deceptions practiced by the mentor upon the mentee,
as Scandura has also pointed out (1998, 457–8). Mentors may also often deceive
themselves both as regards the meaning of their aggressive actions, the likely
consequences to the mentee of those actions, and their motives for taking those
actions. (There is a separate study to be made, in my view, of self-deception in
aggressive mentors.) It is surprising how often it is documents that are the favored
instrument of destructive mentor-on-mentee aggression (MOMA). This will, of
course, have much to do with the institutional forms that our professional lives
take, forms which traffic heavily in letters of recommendation, written evaluations
for promotion or tenure, issuing of grants, agreements to publish and the like. It
remains the case that projects get sabotaged, reputations damaged or destroyed,
deserving publication denied, jobs foreclosed, characters assassinated, lives
blighted, and long-term welfares damaged—all by virtue of the destructively
aggressive actions taken by mentors towards their mentees.
The evidence collected by Eby and her colleagues is especially suggestive, once
all the various kinds of destructive aggressive actions of mentors reported in their
surveys are added up. Despite the limitations of their study (well understood by
its authors), and especially the limitations of self-reporting in formal corporate
mentoring programs (perhaps most especially for female mentees in them), it turns
out that somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of all mentees studied report one
or more instances of such aggressive treatment at the hands of their mentors.5
Whether it is distancing, deception, various kinds of sabotage, harassment, or
more grievous kinds of aggressive treatment, it seems likely that on average one
in two, or at the very least one in three, of all mentoring relationships (whether
informal or formal) will at some time in their history involve such aggression. The
empirical studies remain in their infancy. But they already suggest very strongly,
as does the anecdotal evidence available in almost any institutional setting where
mentoring commonly occurs, that destructive mentor-on-mentee-aggression
(MOMA) is a far more pervasive phenomenon than is commonly allowed. One
further consequence of this is that almost no one in charge of designing or super-
vising formal mentoring programs seems prepared for the prevalence of MOMA
or its expectability. Neither is there any reason to think that higher education,
even that carried out under the aegis of a religious tradition, is exempt from
these same dynamics. Such behavior calls for an explanation, if we are to have
any hope of understanding it. The first step in this direction will be to consider
our phenomenon in the wider context of animal behavior.
MOMA in Ethological Perspective:

The late Stephen Jay Gould once wrote:
Humans are animals, products, like every other twig on the tree of life, of billions
of years of evolutionary history. It would be the most extraordinary happening
in all intellectual history if the cardinal theory for understanding the biologi-
cal origin and construction of our brains and bodies had no insights to offer to
disciplines that study the social organizations arising from such evolved mental
power. (1991, 51)
By parallel reasoning, the broad empirical study of animal behavior (ethology)
should have similar relevance to any widely observed and persistent feature of
human behavior. I take MOMA to be such a feature and I consider here certain
properties of it that ethological theory might illuminate. In a later section we will
turn to consider the more general context of evolutionary theory itself and its
possible bearing on MOMA.
There is a type of behavior found widely in the animal world that seems very
likely to provide a suitable framework within which to consider mentoring and
its properties: so-called “helping” or “alloparenting.” What follows owes a great
deal to the work of Avital and Jablonka, and it will be convenient to begin our
discussion with their description of this behavioral pattern:
In several hundred species of birds and mammals, from bee-eaters and kingfishers
to jays and woodpeckers, from voles and mongooses to bats and marmosets, parents
are helped to rear their offspring by other individuals who seem to surrender, at
least temporarily, their own reproductive rights and opportunities, and become
“helpers.” In a few hundred other species, individuals actually adopt unrelated
young and take full parental responsibility for them. (2000, 208)
The authors go on to show that “helping,” in these species, can extend to a very
wide range of parental or quasi-parental tasks: foraging or feeding, detection of
or protection from predators, choosing a home or choosing a mate (90–5, 116–32).
Mentoring among humans, of course, may be carried out by biological parents
themselves, or by non-parental kin (especially older members such as grand-
parents, aunts, uncles, older siblings), or by individuals who have no biological
relationship with their mentees. The latter kind of mentoring is the sort we are
considering directly in this essay. The view offered here is that such mentoring
should be seen as a development of “alloparenting” as that is found in many other
species. For it seems antecedently likely that mentoring first appeared in human
cultures within the circle of direct kin.
Alloparenting works by means of “social learning,” and here, too, the etholo-
gists have something to say that is relevant to our understanding of mentoring.
Avital and Jablonka define learning as “an adaptive change in behavior that results
from experience” (2000, 69). They stress that learning results both in changes in
behavior and in the structure and organization of the brain. Alloparenting involves
a more particular kind of learning: social learning. The crucial requirement for
this kind of learning is “the presence of one relatively experienced individual
increase[ing] the chances that a naïve individual will learn a new behavior” (90).
Social learning itself, as a kind, is a very complex, and Heyes (1994) finds at least
thirty different sub-types. We need not pursue further here which of these sub-
types might be included in various mentoring relationships. Similarly, the issue
of how far non-human animal species, including our closest primate relatives,
should be understood to engage in intentional forms of social learning, need not
detain us long. I note only that Fragaszy and Visalberghi (1996) have entered
some reasonable caveats regarding the full intentionality of social learning in
non-human primates. In any case, I will suppose that mentoring among human
animals is fully intentional behavior.
Where social learning results in the transmission of forms of behavior across
generations, we have the creation of an “animal tradition.” Avital and Jablonka
define an animal tradition as “a pattern of behavior or a habit, which is observed
in a lineage, a group or a population, and is maintained through the transmis-
sion of socially learnt information” (2000, 95). Tradition has a special relevance to
mentoring, especially human mentoring. Indeed, Laland and his colleagues claim
that “humans appear to be unique in the degree of their reliance on tradition”
(1996, 140). On one level, mentoring involves the induction of the mentee into a
tradition, that is, into a structure of beliefs and practices (with their associated
values) which already govern the behavior, thoughts and pattern of emotional
regulation of the mentor and to which the mentee is invited to conform their
own actions, thoughts, patterns of emotional regulation and so on. On a second
level, mentors themselves very often stand in a tradition of mentoring itself. That is,
they practice a certain style of mentoring which they themselves acquired from
their own mentors, and which they expect to pass on to their own mentees. Such
traditions of mentoring may involve specific methods of training and teaching,
choice of language, images, metaphors, concepts and patterns of argumentation,
justification or explanation, all as they may be relevant to the particular tasks of
mentoring. I take it that there is also an internal relationship between mentoring
and both types of traditions (the traditions of mentoring and the traditions that
give content to mentoring), in so far as those traditions are partially constitutive
of the patterns of behavior which constitute mentoring itself and also partially
determine the meaning of those behaviors for both mentees and mentors alike.
Because of this set of complex internal relationships between mentoring
and its traditions, it seems to me that mentoring is likely to have an inherently
conservative character. For the stability of the tradition under which the mentor
conducts himself or herself, and into which the mentor inducts his/her mentees,
is a requirement for successful mentoring.6 (As I will suggest below, if one of the
main aims of mentoring is the promotion of social cohesion in groups, this gives
us a further reason to expect a marked conservative bias in mentoring.) The tra-
dition, of course, is subject to revision, whether at the hands of the mentor, the
mentee, or other concerned parties, but such revision will face some substantial
degree of opposition. We may therefore expect that the traditions of mentoring
style and of mentoring content will change, in a given animal or social lineage,
over time, but that such changes will be relatively slow. Such changes are also
likely to require considerable expenditures of resources; and can be risky, as we
will see. These factors also conduce to such changes occurring slowly.
Traditions function authoritatively in mentoring relationships. The mentor
himself/herself lives under the aegis of their own traditions and they expect their
mentees to do the same. Such expectations are notable in cases of mentoring
that involve religious or moral teaching, but they also arise very broadly across
academic, scientific, and other professional mentoring relationships. The tradi-
tion stands over and against both mentor and mentee, supplying the standards
of conduct, thought, emotional regulation and other features of living that the
mentoring relationship itself may address (e.g., social relationships and interac-
tions, group structures or processes). This is particularly so in the case of expert
mentors, whose expert knowledge is understood to be an authoritative court of
appeal regarding the behavior of both partners, or any further potential partners
there may be. Mentor and mentee alike are expected to subordinate their own
actions, judgments, other mental states, interests and projects, to the tradition.
All these are to “fit in” with the tradition, to cohere with the tradition, to draw
their ultimate meaning and value from their relationship to the tradition which
they embody. One reason why “gate-keeping” occurs so often in mentoring re-
lationships, I suggest, is because of these authoritative roles of the traditions of
mentoring. Mentors, living themselves under the authority of a tradition, will have
a vested interest in helping to preserve the integrity and stability of that tradition
in the practices and beliefs of the mentee. Conduct that is “unbecoming” to the
tradition, as the mentor understands it, is likely to be discouraged, often by very
aggressive and intrusive means.
Like other forms of alloparenting that it resembles, the social learning that is
mentoring can be a highly efficient mechanism for building coalitions and alli-
ances. Indeed, I propose that this is at least one of the central functions of men-
toring. Successful mentors enhance their own social prestige in relevant group
settings by gathering a corps of mentees around them. They advertise thereby
both their intentions to build coalitions and display their prowess at doing so.
(The psychological rewards for such success will concern us further later on.) In
universities, especially those devoted primarily to research, successful mentors
are more likely to attract the best and brightest of potential mentees (e.g., graduate
students or junior colleagues), are more likely than others to attract funding for
their “group” and gain in other forms of social prestige. In advanced professional
training institutions, such as psycho-analytic training institutes, those (usually
senior) training analysts who attract the most supervisees and/or the most tal-
ented supervisees, accrue similar degrees and kinds of social prestige, together
with the privileges and benefits arising there from. In religious organizations,
successful mentors may influence the formation of religious leaders (e.g., pastors,
counselors, priests, deacons, missionaries, all of whom may well serve as mentors
in their turn) for multiple generations. In seeing these ambitions carried out, we
see perhaps this central function of mentoring most clearly displayed.
Mentees, of course, also benefit from successful mentoring. Mentoring can
be a highly efficient method for gaining entry into a social group which may be
very hard to enter without passing through the hands of a mentor. This is one
reason, for example, that research universities often ask student applicants if
they already have a relationship with some senior faculty member. And, once
one becomes associated with a successful mentor, entry into other elements of
the institution and its resources, is often much easier than it otherwise would be.
Entry into new social groups, after all, is stressful and costly, especially in terms
of time, energy, emotional strain, and even monetary resources. All such costs
can be considerably reduced, very often, if a person can first establish a secure
position as the mentee of someone who already has a secure position within the
group. Laland, et al. have emphasized the cost-effectiveness of social learning in
general, and their comments apply, mutatis mutandis, to mentoring: “A system of
social learning may reduce the costs of individual learning by allowing individu-
als to rely partly on other experienced individuals rather than engaging in costly
trials, exploration, and/or calculations of their own” (1996, 139). In some social
groups, notably religious and professional training groups, it is virtually impos-
sible to enter from the outside without the carte blanche supplied by a mentor who
is already recognized in the group as successful.
It should also be noted in this context that mentees often enhance their own
social prestige by virtue of the mentoring alliances they enter into. Graduate
students in research universities, for example, often will gain in prestige among
their fellow graduate students, or even in the opinion of prospective employers,
by virtue of the reputations of their mentors. I know personally of one case of a
graduate student who was hired by a major research university into an entry-
level faculty position without benefit of an individual interview, on the basis of
their knowledge of his mentors’ reputation and that mentor’s good opinion of his
student. In another case known to me a young scholar was hired into a prestigious
university department as a condition of the parallel hiring of his much more senior
mentor. In these cases, successful mentees gained substantial advantages over and
against peers who were competing with them. Students in psychoanalytic training
institutes often gain social prestige by virtue of their associations with selected
senior training analysts. Religious leaders’ protégé’s often gain advantage in the
competition for jobs or other professional markers of prestige by virtue of their
close and well-advertised association with selected mentors. Publication in profes-
sional journals, access to grant-making bodies and their funds, and other avenues
of professional advancement (e.g., favorable work loads, or ready promotion)
often follow as consequences of successful mentoring coalitions.
Mentees also gain valuable instruction and examples of mentoring itself, from
their experiences in such coalitions. Indeed, as mentoring is an inherently trans-
generational phenomenon, it is to be expected that the junior partners in success-
ful mentoring alliances will replicate at least some of the patterns of mentoring
to which they have been exposed. Gains of these kinds are likely to be greatest
in those alliances that are longest lasting and that engage the most fundamental
of values and purposes shared by both mentor and mentee. This may also be a
further reason why patterns of mentoring in religious and political organizations,
as well as in professional societies, tend to persist. Where mentoring is perceived
to be mutually satisfactory, there will be a natural tendency, then, to conserve its
fundamental patterns.
Such reflections go some distance, in my view, to confirm the heuristic value
of the suggestion that mentoring relationships function primarily as instances of
coalition-building. There is more to be said about the coalitions that mentors form
when they are successful, and many of the properties of such coalitions, especially
as they develop over the life of the mentoring relationships, could usefully be
explored further. One such is the element of risk.
Entering coalitions is often risky. And this is true both for the mentor and the
mentee. Both must expend energy and other resources (including social capital)
to make known their intentions to enter into a coalition, and both run the risk
that such expenditures of resources will be wasted. They may be wasted if the
offer is refused, for example. They may be wasted if the offer is accepted but
the coalition proves to be too short-lived to serve the individual purposes of its
partners. They may be wasted if the coalition lasts but turns out to be relatively
unbeneficial to either or both partners. Benefit may fail to accrue to either for a
wide variety of reasons, some of which may have nothing to do with the two
partners per se, but rather with the manner in which their coalition is perceived
by or evaluated by other members of their group. Partners to the coalition may
themselves change, over time, such that they no longer share the same set of
values or beliefs upon which the coalition was founded, and which were central
to the traditions under whose influence the coalition was formed. Such changes
will almost certainly spell an end to the relationship, even if it has not yet run its
normal course to completion.
Like Avital and Jablonka, then, I think that mentoring—as a form of allopar-
enting—is essentially a mechanism for promoting social cohesion by means of
successful coalitions or alliances. It is probably derived from parental mentoring,
though it also possible that it might be among those “group emergent” mecha-
nisms that Avital and Jablonka take to be independent of specifically familial
structures and processes (2000, 249). It essentially involves forms of social learning,
and usually (perhaps always) takes place under the conserving and authoritative
umbrella of some tradition or other. It is a risky form of behavior and is costly to
both partners. Those costs are most often outweighed, and often very considerably
so, by the benefits that the coalition may secure for both partners in their wider
social setting. In any case, mentoring, understood in this ethological perspective,
is an inherently active and assertive enterprise. Mentors expect to shape, mould
and otherwise form their mentees. Indeed, they often expect to shape some of the
most fundamental values held by their mentees. Like an artist working in stone,
they expect to carve out a new Pygmalion. This requires an assertive and active
stance on their part. This is in keeping, with the etymology of the term “aggres-
sion” (Akhtar 1995, 365). Whether derived from Latin ad + gradi (to move towards)
or from Latin aggredi (to attack), aggressive behavior is always active and assertive.
Moreover, much active and assertive behavior is reasonably taken to be aggres-
sive, in this very general sense. It need not be overtly hostile. My view is that all
forms of alloparenting as well as its various derivatives, are therefore aggressive.
Indeed, on this view, we should expect to find aggressive behavior in mentoring
relationships. What would be genuinely surprising is a mentoring relationship
in which aggressive behavior played no role at all. And where there is aggressive
behavior, there is at least the possibility for it to be harmful or destructive. As I
expect to show in the next section, this is particularly likely in view of the risks
and costs associated with mentoring.
Testing Coalitional Bonds:

MOMA as Evolutionary Strategy:
It is perhaps too easy to speculate as to the evolutionary origins of mentoring.
Alloparenting itself has attracted its own fair share of such speculations. Since we
find mentoring wherever we look in human culture, including hunter-gatherer
cultures that are often held to be close to the “early environment of adaptation”
for our own species, and including other primate species evolutionarily close to
our own, it seems virtually certain that mentoring has an evolutionary history of
its own. It follows from this and from the basic tenets of evolutionary theory that
mentoring has been shaped by processes of natural selection, for, as Tooby and
Cosmides put it, “natural selection is the only known process (aside from intel-
ligent manufacture) that can create complex functional design over time” (1990,
382). In the present state of evolutionary theory it seems further to be virtually
certain that mentoring arose either as an adaptation or as an exaptation. If it is an
instance of the first, then it represents a solution, in Tooby and Cosmides’s terms,
to “specific problems posed by the regularities of the physical, chemical, ecologi-
cal, informational, and social environments encountered by the ancestors of [our]
species during the course of its evolution” (1990, 383). If, on the other hand, it
represents an exaptation, then it is a development of originally adaptive features
of human behavior “that now enhance fitness, but were not built by natural
selection for their current role” (Gould and Vrba 1982, 4). Gould and Lewontin,
1979, famously argued that exaptation is central to human evolution, and Gould
repeated the argument at much greater length in his more recent magnum opus
(2002, 1214–95). Of course, in order to decide whether mentoring is an adapta-
tion or an exaptation would require knowledge of the specific selection pressures
that operated in the early environment of adaptation, and such knowledge is not
available to us. While I find the exaptational account of mentoring particularly
congenial, however, it is not necessary for us to settle the matter here.7
Alloparenting, or “helping,” is also beneficial on the level of the group, es-

pecially for groups in which it is well-established.8 We might expect to find that
mentoring, as a particular form of alloparenting, has similar group benefits. If
the theory of group selection is correct, it may shed further light on the likely
evolutionary history of mentoring. We can, however, understand the emergence
of mentoring across human cultures as a natural product of the evolution of our
species without subscribing to the notion of group selection. Either way, we almost
certainly should further understand that mentoring is a species-wide development
that is the result of a single unified developmental process that involves both “cul-
tural” and “genetic” sub-processes of transmission and change. As Griffiths and
Gray (1994) and especially Oyama (2000) have demonstrated, cultural processes
of development and genetic processes of development implicate one another,
each supplying a possible route by which the other is enhanced. Mentoring has
the look and the feel of a pattern of behavior that is the product of just such a
unified developmental system.9
Having said this much, can we go further? I suggest that the “handicap prin-
ciple” proposed by the Zahavi’s can further illuminate the evolutionary valence
of MOMA. That principle seems now to be widely accepted by evolutionary
biologists and it pertains especially to the problem of risk-reduction.10
Coalitions and alliances essentially involve and are partially constituted by
certain kinds of bonds. Indeed, Zahavi defined “bond” in terms of coalitions: a
bond, he says, is “an agreement between individuals to form a coalition” (1977,
246). Of course, once such an agreement is made, the bond itself suffers various
vicissitudes and gradually acquires its own history. Bonds, considered in this
sense, may be proposed, considered, made, extended, adapted, and dissolved.
Bonds have many other properties that could be explored further: e.g., the pat-
terns of emotional regulation that attach to them, the characteristic anxieties that
attach to them, the characteristic pleasures and displeasures their exercise can
generate, the social structures that contain them, the typical language or other
symbolic representations they are cast in, the rituals and rites that attend their
making and unmaking. But there is one very basic feature of bonds that is par-
ticularly relevant to our concern with MOMA, and it has very particularly to do
with Zahavi’s “handicap” principle.
For mentoring relationships to begin, one partner must propose the formation
of a bond and the other partner must decide whether to accept the proposal. In
doing so, both partners must send information to the other by way of signals. It is
essential for both prospective partners to be able to assess accurately the reliability
of these signals. The prospective mentee needs to know whether the prospec-
tive mentor’s intentions are genuine. The prospective mentor needs to know if
the junior partner’s acceptance of his/her offer is genuine. Both must assess the
intentions, purposes, values, of the other. All this takes place under conditions of
considerable uncertainty (in some cases partially relieved by the status of the two
partners within an institutional setting). It is this uncertainty that introduces the
element of risk. For, in an uncertain situation such as this, one risks expenditure
of considerable energy, time and social capital for inadequate return. Thus, any
device or mechanism that can reduce this uncertainty has great practical value
to both partners. Zahavi has proposed that the transmission of reliable informa-
tion typically (and perhaps invariably) costs the sender something (time, energy,
social capital or other resources). The cost validates the reliability of the signal as
a guide to the real intentions of the signaler. Such costs, or “handicaps,” in turn,
are conveyed by some characteristics of the signal itself. An example is the use
of a very up-right stance in humans, when making a threat (Zahavi and Zahavi
1997, 15–24). Threats are often conveyed by throwing back the head, thrusting
out the chin (“leading with the chin,” as we say), and otherwise adopting a much
more upright stance than usual. Such a stance is costly to the signaler because it
requires her visibly to sacrifice a good defensive posture. By accompanying any
verbal or gestural communication of a threat with this postural quality, the person
issuing the threat conveys its sincerity and seriousness to any recipient.
By extension, persons proposing the formation of an alliance, or considering
such proposals, will need to adopt methods of signaling that also indicate to their
prospective partners that the signal is reliable. Some such methods might be the
choice of language by which the offer is tendered (couching it, for example, in
terms that the recipient is likely to find attractive), or their tone of voice, or the
manner in which the offer supervenes on other features of their relationship (its
gradualness, for example, building up to the direct offer by stages). Perhaps
the most powerful indication of the reliability of each partner’s signals will be a
history of having professed adherence to the relevant tradition, and consistent
demonstration of same through actions. The recipient has a need to “read” or
interpret these signals correctly, and probably does so by intuitive means, rather
than by some process of formal deliberate reasoning.11 Developing a reliable habit
of reading such signals correctly, and of placing trust only in signalers who are
themselves trust-worthy, are among the few ways a potential mentee or mentor
can reduce the risk of acting on mistaken or misleading information and thereby
entering into coalitions that are doomed to failure from their inception.
But this is not the only way in which handicaps may enter into the life histories
of coalitions, including mentoring relationships. For, once the bond is formed,
its continuing viability will need to be tested from time to time. This is particu-
larly true, I suggest, whenever the coalition is about to enter into a new phase,
one requiring greater commitment on the part of either or both partners to the
fundamental values, purposes, methods, and so on, that constitute the coalition’s
tradition. New levels of commitment, after all, will require new expenditures of
resources, new investments of time and energy, and thus incur new risks and
uncertainties. Zahavi and Zahavi make an illuminating claim on this point: “The
only way to obtain reliable information about another’s commitment is to impose
on that other—to behave in ways that are detrimental to him or her” (1997, 112).
That is, according to their view, the only way to reduce uncertainty and risk (to
acceptable levels) in these situations, is to put stress on the bond itself. And this
entails, I submit, acting aggressively towards the other partner. This may not be
the only way to accomplish the goal, but it seems likely that it is one of the most
common ways, and very probably one of the most efficient.
Indeed, within certain limits, the more severe the stress, the more informa-
tion relevant to the viability of the bond is likely to be generated. Those limits
are hard to define sharply. However, it seems plausible to say that too little stress
will fail to yield the required information, and too much will simply cause the
bond to break (also failing to yield the required information). Like a well-tuned
violin string, one wants the right degree of tension between it and the bow that
plays on it, not too much and not too little. Moreover, the stress must come at the
right time, and it seems clear that mistakes of timing are also easy to make. The
stress must be delivered in the right form, and must also carry it own handicap-
ping information, so as to be taken seriously by the other partner. It must also, of
course, be delivered in a form that is intelligible. In these respects (and perhaps
others), stressing coalition bonds correctly requires action according to Aristotle’s
doctrine of the mean: doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for
the right reasons, and so on.12 Judging such matters correctly, at least most of the
time, would seem to be a part of the practical wisdom of successful mentors. It is
not clear whether such stressing of coalition bonds is likely to be symmetrical or
asymmetrical: that is, whether mentees are likely to stress the bond by behaving
aggressively towards their mentors, though this certainly seems possible, and
even likely. For mentees also need to know if the deeper commitment required
in a new phase of mentoring is forthcoming from the mentor.
Stressing the bond that is central to and constitutive of the coalition is also
likely to occur when the real goal (whether consciously formulated or not) is ter-
mination of the coalition. In such cases, the stressors are likely to be some form
of MOMA. This, I contend, is especially likely if the mentor’s aim (again, whether
conscious or otherwise) is to get the mentee to back out of the relationship. Such
an aim may be part of the mentor’s self-deception, further disguising from her
various anxieties that may have given rise to the intention to terminate. Some of
those anxieties will concern us further in the next section of this essay.
What all this further suggests is that aggressive behavior, even destructively
aggressive behavior, especially on the part of mentors and aimed at their mentees,
once again, is expectable. Indeed, if mentoring is a product of our long evolutionary
heritage, as seems likely, and if mentoring belongs to a very wide stock of animal
behaviors (alloparenting of all kinds), as now appears likely, then mentoring has
very deep roots in our biological nature. And if mentoring is fundamentally a
process of building a coalition, the foundational bond of which requires, from
time to time, to be stressed—and sometimes stressed very considerably—, then
what would be truly surprising would be the absence of aggressive behavior by
mentors towards their mentees.
These considerations, however, do not yet resolve some other issues about
MOMA. In particular, they do not account for those instances of MOMA which are
seriously destructive or abusive. Many of these instances will be due, of course,
to simple misjudgment or other mistakes in the complex dynamics of signally
and stressing that have been outlined above. Moreover, some mentors (and some
mentees) will be more adept at these things than others. We may even expect that
some cultural patterns or some institutional patterns may enshrine such mistakes
and misjudgments, thereby ensuring their longevity (perhaps even generating a

tradition of poor mentoring). But we need a further and different kind of expla-
nation to account for the egregiously harmful character of MOMA. We also need
a “hook” for MOMA in the psychology of ordinary individual human agents.
To accomplish these ends, I propose adding to our ethological and evolutionary
considerations an exploration of narcissistic dynamics.
MOMA and Normal Narcissism:

Like all social phenomena, MOMA almost certainly has multiple causes, and its
psychological roots are likely to be similarly variegated. However, the view taken
here is that some of the most destructive aspects of MOMA can be traced to narcis-
sistic dynamics, especially as those operate in mentors themselves. What follows
is a brief outline of a theory of normal narcissistic functioning which arises from
contemporary neurobiological and developmental psychoanalysis. In using the
terminology of normal narcissism, I stress that such functioning is entirely non-path-
ological in its central character. That is, I am not now concerned with the so-called
narcissistic personality disorders, nor with those other forms of self-involvement,
self-absorption, and self-aggrandizement that we find commonly in social life and
usually find so disagreeable. The reference here, instead, is to a dimension of normal
human psychological development and a normal functional structure to be found
in all psychologically and neurologically intact adult members of our species. 13
It seems, then, that every intact member of our species past the age of three years
has a self-representation which is comprised of images, memories, beliefs, values,
internalized patterns of interrelatedness with emotionally significant persons, and
patterns of affective regulation—all bound together in a more or less coherent nar-
rative framework. The narcissistic system serves three fundamental purposes with
regard to the agent’s sense of self.14 The first is to promote the cohesion and coherence
of the self-representation over time (diachronic stability). The second is to promote
the meaningful coherence and cohesion of the self-representation at any particular
time (synchronic stability). And the third is to promote a positive emotional tone
with respect to the self (self-esteem). Like all such basic motivational systems, the
narcissistic system (hereinafter NARC) has its own developmental history. Such de-
velopment is strongly biological, implicating especially the emergent capacities of the
right hemisphere of the prefrontal cortex and its neuronal connections to the limbic
system, especially the amygdala, hypothalamus and hippocampus.15 Narcissistic
functioning, then, should almost certainly be seen as “distributed” over this com-
plex of brain systems, and for this reason is not strictly modular in its fundamental
architecture (where modularity is understood in its full Fodorian sense, for which
see Fodor 1983). The development of the system is strongly social, requiring what
Buchsbaum and Emde have called “facilitation and direction through accumulated
experiences within the infant-caregiver relationship” (1990, 131). That is, as Vygotsky
showed in the early 1930’s, and as has been confirmed by developmental studies
ever since, the process is also governed by the same general principle governing all
human psycho-social development: “all psychological processes appear first at an
interpersonal and only later at an intrapersonal level” (Schore 1994, 358).16
It is customary among developmental scientists to refer to NARC as a homeo-

static system (e.g., Schore 1994, 363). Such systems, operate automatically to regulate
an optimal level of functioning between “set-points,” much as a heating and cooling
system in a building will use a thermostat to regulate optimal levels of temperature
between the parameters programmed into it. On this view, patterns of arousal and
inhibition in animals exhibit similar structures and functioning. However, for vari-
ous reasons, it seems better to describe NARC as an “allostatic” system.17 Allostatic
systems are just like homeostatic systems, but have three additional properties:
(a) their “set-points” are explicitly changeable, such that the thresholds governing
operation of the system can be altered; (b) the system is responsive to a complex
variety of environmental factors (both exteroceptive and interoceptive), weight-
ing them automatically in various ways; and (c) its functioning is vital for living.
On the last point, we can point to the systems in the human body responsible for
maintenance of pH levels, blood-pressure, and the like, which are vital for biological
life. The view taken here is that NARC is, by analogy, vital for the continuance of
the psychological life of the agent, including the well-functioning of the appropri-
ate biological substrata. Only the concept of an allostatic system, in my view, will
allow us to take into account the complex psycho-social developmental history of
the individual agent’s narcissistic system, and its vicissitudes.
The system has associated with it a characteristic suite of emotions, three of
which are especially prominent: narcissistic elation, narcissistic anxiety, and nar-
cissistic rage. I understand these emotions, like all emotions, as distinctive forms
of cognition that appear ontogentically prior to linguistic competence and that do
not depend on reasoning, following the pattern of many contemporary philoso-
phers of the emotions.18 The emotional suite serves to track and represent (both
to the agent and to others) the perceived vicissitudes of the self-representation.
Narcissistic pay-offs or rewards tend to provoke narcissistic elation, described
by Schore as “a state of pleasure plus the urge toward exuberance and contact-
seeking” (1994, 83). Elation also brings with it feelings of vigor, strength, and a
general readiness for action. It construes the agent as full of power and able ef-
fectively to project this power into the future, turning despair into hope, shame
and humiliation into grandiosity, expansiveness and effective action. It can be
among the most intense of human affective states, most often as a result of the
agent’s demonstration (both to self and to significant others) of competence and
consequent satisfaction of internal norms or standards. Narcissistic anxiety is pro-
voked especially by perceived threats to the narcissistic balance of the individual,
especially expectations of aversive events, and most especially by expectations
of failure to satisfy the same internal norms or standards. Like other forms of
anxiety, narcissistic anxiety tends to activate release of stress hormones.19 Chronic
experiences of high degrees of narcissistic anxiety are characteristic of some of
the most severe forms of human psychopathology and are very debilitating to
the human personality. Narcissistic anxiety can become so intense that it takes the
form of a “nameless dread,” a fear so intense as to appear to the agent formless,
limitless, without bounds, a threat to the very coherence of the sense of self. Such
fear can seem to the agent to be global and ineluctable, portending the total and
catastrophic collapse of the self.20 Precisely what external events are most likely
to provoke narcissistic anxiety tends to vary from individual to individual and
is often an exact representation of what is the range between the set-points of the
NARC system. Elation and rage, by contrast, will often indicate just where the
set-points themselves are fixed, at any given stage of development.
Narcissistic rage is, in its developmental origins, especially associated with
what Schore calls “the heightened frustration-triggered aggressive drive common
in the practicing period of infancy” (1994, 339). Its appearance in ordinary adult
life is an unmistakable indication that a threshold (set-point) of NARC has been
approached or overstepped. Its primary indicator is the sheer intensity of the
rage itself, an intensity which other persons in the immediate environment are
most likely to perceive to be inappropriate to the quality of its stimulus. Horowitz
gave what has become the classic description of this form of anger, as he found
it in one of his patients:
Not thinking, all feeling. He wants to demolish and destroy persons who frustrate
him. He is not aware of every loving or even faintly like the object [of his rage]. He
has no awareness that his rage is a passion that will decline. He believes he will
hate the object forever. (1992, 80)
Such rage reproduces in an adult the conditions otherwise well-known in any
temper tantrum thrown by a toddler. Its arousal is a sure sign that something
has occurred which violates one of the most deeply held values informing the
self-representation that lies at the heart of NARC. Such violations are often un-
predictable by others in the agent’s environment, and we are often taken entirely
by surprise when narcissistic rage erupts.
Running like a red-thread through this suite of emotions and its vicissitudes
is a hedonic dimension, as well. This is especially evident, of course, with respect
to narcissistic elation, which we have partially defined in terms of pleasure. It can
also be true that narcissistic rage will prove to be pleasant to the agent, especially
where the urge to smash and destroy the provoking object can be successfully
sublimated. I follow Schroeder in understanding pleasure and displeasure in
representational terms.21 Pleasure, on this view, represents a net satisfaction of
desires, while displeasure represents a net dissatisfaction of those same desires.
Hedonic states, we may say, then, monitor the overall condition of the system
NARC with respect to the satisfaction/dissatisfaction of narcissistically charged de-
sires. Narcissistic hedonic states are, like other forms of pleasure and displeasure,
causally dependent on other forms of representation, and are thus, as Schroeder
puts it, “downstream of other forms of perceptual representation” (2001, 516).22
Narcissistic desires arise from the fundamental values that structure the system.
Here the older language of classic psychoanalysis, and especially the twin con-
cepts of the ego ideal and the ideal ego, can be useful. Moore and Fine give a useful
definition, here of the ego ideal, explicitly tying it to the self-image:
The images of the self to which the individual aspires consciously and uncon-
sciously, and against which he measure himself. It is based on identification with
the parents and other early environmental figures, as they actually are, were in the
past, or as they have been idealized [to be]. (1967, 93)
These ideals have a curious “push/pull” quality. In so far as they represent an

idealized object, person, relationship or other state of affairs, they furnish the agent
with a mental representation that stands over and against her self-representation.
In that sense, they furnish us with our ego ideal. But they also represent per-
formances, relationships and states of affairs that are possible and desirable for
the agent. Jacobson called this “the double face of the ego ideal,” and traced its
motivational power to our (developmentally) archaic desire “to be one with the
love object” (1964, 96).23
It is especially in connection with such ideals that changing the set-points in the
system can become an urgent developmental task. For it often happens that ideals
that were adaptive at one stage in the life of the agent, have ceased to be such in
some later stage, either because of changes in her external milieu, or because the
agent no longer adheres to the basic values informing those ideals and wishes to
alter them. Such changes are often signaled by the eruption of major depressive
disorders, and making such changes can often constitute the deeper psychological
meaning of depression. In any case, changing such set-points is almost always an
arduous task, requiring large expenditures of resources, both internal to the agent
and external (in the usual way, involving time, energy, emotional investment,
financial and social capital). Often, agents will also find external help essential,
and here is where psychotherapy can be useful: helping the agent to discover
what new set of values she wishes to adopt, and supporting her through the often
painful process of making those changes. NARC, as we have contended, is indeed
an allostatic system, but changing the set-points is never an easy task, and can be
extremely time consuming. It is also often socially costly, as thorough restructur-
ing of NARC will usually require similarly substantial alterations in the agent’s
network of social relationships, style of living, profession, and the like.
The vicissitudes of human life being what they are, narcissistic threats, blows
and wounds tend to proliferate for even the most fortunate of us. Healthy persons
evaluate such threats, blows and wounds appropriately, representing those evalu-
ations in their narcissistic affective and hedonic states. They are able to deploy
their own narcissistic emotions freely and appropriately. They are able to maintain
the balance of the system in the face of such threats, blows and wounds. When
the system becomes unbalanced, even very severely, they can, over time, repair
the damage, re-establishing the balance. Where necessary, they can do the vital
but difficult work of restructuring the system. The manner in which individuals
both incur and recover from narcissistic wounds, in particular, represents well the
overall functionality of the system, and with it issues in a representation of the
individual’s narcissistic health. There is an associated concept of narcissistic resilience,
which represents our capacity specifically to recover from narcissistic wounds.
And with this goes also a concept of narcissistic vulnerability (which measures our
sensitivity to narcissistic threats, and the likelihood of those issuing in outright
wounds). These latter concepts, in particular, have relevance to MOMA.
The notions of the ego ideal and of the ideal ego introduce values which
agents aspire to realize and against which agents judge the worth of their actual
behavior. Mentoring, I contend, always also implicates these values. For mentoring
is, among much else, an effort to reproduce these values in the mentee. For this
project to reach completion, the mentor must succeed in creating or discovering
in the mentee some representation of these values, for only on such common
ground can mentoring flourish. Ragins has put the point this way: “the mentor
identifies the protégé as representative of his or her past, whereas the protégé
identifies the mentor as representative of his or her future” (1997, 494). But this
also means that the mentor’s values will be brought under the scrutiny of the
mentee (and perhaps others with whom the mentee interacts). And this requires
that the mentor and his values be able to withstand such scrutiny. It is also at
least possible, if not likely, that some of these values will eventually be called into
question and rejected by the mentee. This is particularly likely during the fourth
and final stage of the phases of most mentoring relationships, as those were iden-
tified by Chao (1997). This is the phase of “redefinition,” which, though it tends
to occur, according to Chao’s data, several years after separation between mentee
and mentor often begins while the relationship still obtains. Mentees commonly
move away from their mentors and seek to carve out their own path in life. My
point here is simply that this entire dynamic of exposure of fundamental values,
scrutiny and criticism of same, followed by possible revision or outright rejection
of those values by the mentee, is narcissistically dangerous territory. Moreover, these
values are likely to be at the center of the mentor’s own sense of self. They thus
serve to structure the mentor’s most cherished life-projects. Their exposure and
criticism is likely to constitute a narcissistic threat, and their rejection a narcissis-
tic blow or wound. Defensive maneuvers designed to deflect such blows and to
prevent such wounds, are entirely rational from the point of view of NARC and
virtually unavoidable in a narcissistically healthy and resilient mentor. Much of
the repertoire of destructive mentor aggression may well be explained in terms
of such defensive maneuvers. We know that narcissistic threats and blows tend
to provoke aggressive responses. Numerous empirical studies have shown very
clearly the deep connection between aggression and threats to narcissistic equi-
librium.24 While many of the cases considered in this literature implicate clearly
pathological narcissistic organizations, there is no reason to suppose that the basic
dynamic is not to be found in entirely normal individuals with well-functioning
narcissistic systems.
After all, if mentees are “cut down to size,” then their critical scrutiny and
rejection of important values of the mentor may be given less weight or avoided
altogether; either way, their potential to wreck havoc in the narcissistic economy of
the mentor will be inhibited. The need for such inhibition, and with it for MOMA,
is likely to be greatest where the mentee has, in the judgment of her mentor, the
greatest likelihood of succeeding in carving out a successful alternative set of
values, and a successful form of life embodying those values. Ironically, then, it
is the strongest, most adept, most gifted of mentees who are most likely, on this
account, to provoke MOMA. It seems also likely that MOMA is most likely to
occur some distance into the history of the mentoring dyad. It is also these gifted
mentees who stand in greatest need, perhaps, of training in how to detect and to
ameliorate MOMA. Amelioration of the effects of MOMA, and early detection of
it, will require a considerable degree of narcissistic health in the mentee. On the
mentor’s side of things, probably only an unusually high degree of self-awareness
on her part, and an unusual kind of preparation for the rigors of mentoring, are
likely to make the mentor able to detect their own tendency for MOMA, and to
interrupt or sublimate that tendency before it results in overtly destructively
aggressive behavior.
It further follows from these considerations that some individuals should
never be allowed to mentor others. I have in mind those persons whose narcis-
sistic system is pathologically organized, whose narcissistic vulnerability is too
great, and/or whose self-awareness in this dimension of human motivation is
inadequate to the task. It is very likely, as well, that some individuals should
never enter into a mentoring coalition as mentees, and especially when similar
considerations apply to their psychological organization. Social organizations
that take pride in their encouragement of mentoring should likewise consider
these issues when they design those programs, and take steps to evaluate the
narcissistic health of the participants.25
Duck argued that social scientific research into personal relationships has long
been infected with a relentless “positivity” that tends to ignore darker elements
of such relationships. He pleaded that:
the dark side is integral to the experience of relationships, not separate from it. . . .
When it is recognized that real lives are richly entwined with begrudging, venge-
ful, hostile, conflictive tensions and struggles, it will perhaps begin to be realized
that one must also start to look at the ways in which people cope with them in life
and then to theorize about them. (1994, 6)
I have argued in this paper that MOMA is expectable, that it goes with the territory,
so to speak. Such a view is not intended to excuse such destructive aggression,
especially in its most abusive manifestations. Quite the contrary. But I am sug-
gesting that we heed Duck’s advice and realize that in any given social setting,
some level of harmful mentor on mentee aggression is probably unavoidable. It
is incumbent upon us to prepare both mentors and mentees for the likelihood
of its appearance in any mentoring coalition they may form. Mentoring is thus
conceived here as an inherently dangerous business for all concerned. We hide
from this fact at our peril. After all, we are all of us members of the most aggres-
sive species on the planet.
Endnotes
1. See Eby et al. 2000; Eby et al. 2004; Scandura 1998; and Ragins et al. 2000.
2. Scandura 1998, 451; and cf. Chao et al. 1992. Raggins et al. 2000, 1177 found that
one-third of all major American corporations have formal mentoring programs.
3. Inferential role theories of concepts are especially attractive in this context: see
Montminy 2005, and compare the “clustering” approach of Verbeemen et al. 2007. That
concepts can be prototypes is vigorously denied by Fodor and Lepore 1996 and Connolly
et al. 2007. Racanati 2002 and Robbins 2002 are valuable in reply. It is notable, further, that
autistic persons seem to be unable to form prototypes, but can perform categorizing tasks
by other means: see Klinger and Dawson 2001. The concept of “family resemblance” was
worked out by Wittgenstein 1953, §§ 65–7; for an illuminating commentary on which see
Bambrough 1966.
4. Gate-keeping is discussed by Eby 2000, 6–7 and in Ragins 1997. Compare, from an
ethological point of view, the treatment of “upstarts” in Boehm 1999, 43–63.
5. Eby 2000; and compare Scandura 1998 for similar results.
6. Avital and Jablonka 2000, 280 emphasize the conservative character of animal tradi-
tions generally.
7. Andrews, et al. 2002 is an excellent review of the many issues surrounding the
debate over Gould and Lewontin’s original thesis. Also valuable in this regard are Dupré
2002b and Dupré 2001 for effective criticisms of the hyper-adaptationist approach of many
contemporary evolutionary theorists.
8. See Avital and Jablonka 2000, 208–42 and 248–77; and cf. Boyd and Richerson 1990
for similar views. Valencia et al. 2006 and Lecomte et al. 2006 go some distance towards
demonstrating empirically such group effects of alloparenting in non-human species.
9. Cf. also Griffiths 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1996. Especially valuable is the collection of
essays in Oyama et al. 2001.
10. The principle is adumbrated in Zahavi 1995 and worked out in detail in Zahavi and
Zahavi 1997. It was given a mathematical model by Grafen 1990a and 1990b.
11. I am following here the seminal treatment of intuitive judgment in Haidt 2001.
Compare Depaul and Ramsey 1998 for more thorough philosophical treatments compat-
ible with Haidt’s approach.
12. For Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, see Nicomachean Ethics II.6, 1106a 15-11–7a 8
and the illuminating essay by Urmson 1980.
13. The literature on narcissism is now immense. My own formulations owe much to
the work of Kernberg 1971 and 1977; Stolorow 1975; Solan 1991, 1998 and 1999; Schore
1994, 2003a and 2003b; Fonagy et al. 2002; also Kirkpatrick and Ellis 2002.
14. The concept of the “self” is much contested. For reviews (and defense of the cogency
of the concept) see Strawson 2005; and Gallagher and Shear 1999. Baker 2000, especially
91–117 makes an attractive addition. Oyama 2000, 87–93 suggests the compatibility of the
concept with a developmental systems approach to evolutionary theory.
15. See Gray 1982; Schore 1994; Schulkin et al. 1994; McEwen and Magarinos 2001; Fonagy
et al. 2002; and McEwen and Olié 2005. There is a parallel literature on the role of cortico-
limbic neuronal reciprocity as a biological substrate for moods: see Mayberg et al. 1999.
16. Vygotsky’s original papers are translated and re-published in Vygotsky 1978.
17. The concept of allostasis was first described by Sterling and Eyer 1988 and has been
considerably extended by McEwen and Stellar 1993; McEwen and Seeman 1999; and McE-
wen 2000.
18. See, for example, Helm 2001; Roberts 2003; Stocker and Hegeman 1996; and Charland
1997. Deigh 1994 gives a valuable overview of what surely should by now be known as
the “cognitivist school.”
19. An association demonstrated by McEwen et al. 1994.
20. Winnicott 1989, 139, 196 and 260 called such states “archaic anxieties.”
21. See Schroeder 2001 and 2004, chap. 3.
22. This is another reason for thinking that NARC is not a strictly Fodorian module: it
is not informationally encapsulated.
23. Blos 1974; and Schafer 1967 have given similar formulations, as have many other
psychoanalytic investigators.
24. See Baumeister et al. 1996; Bushman and Baumeister 1998; Bushman and Baumeister
2002; Bushman et al. 2003; Stucke and Sporer 2002; Twenge and Campbell 2003; Barry et
al. 2006; Konrath et al. 2006; and Boyd et al. 2006.
25. Empirical tests for narcissistic vulnerability are available, based on the Minnesota
Multi-phasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): see Rasking and Terry 1988; and Wink 1991
and 1992. Wink’s distinction between overt and covert narcissism is also valuable here.
There is a further set of issues to be explored having to do with the narcissistic health,
vulnerability and resilience of social organizations themselves, but this takes us into what
is largely uncharted territory, both empirically and conceptually.
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The Dark Side of Mentoring Explaining Mentor-on-Mentee

Article in The International journal of applied philosophy · January 2009

Richard Terence Mcclelland

Dark Star: Divine omniscience & epistemic distance. View project

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Abstract: Recently available social scientific evidence suggests strongly

their administrators and trustees. In the tradition of pedagogy to which my own

physics (especially their theory of mixture) on some theological debates among

MOMA in Ethological Perspective:

Testing Coalitional Bonds:

Alloparenting, or “helping,” is also beneficial on the level of the group, es-

and misjudgments, thereby ensuring their longevity (perhaps even generating a

MOMA and Normal Narcissism:

It is customary among developmental scientists to refer to NARC as a homeo-

These ideals have a curious “push/pull” quality. In so far as they represent an

Chao, G. “Mentoring Phases and Outcomes.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 51 (1997):

———. “Cladistic Classification and Functional Explanation.” Philosophy of Science 61

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