“Watching the show always felt like I was at work,” said Clay Cockrell, a psychotherapist who specializes in treating wealthy people and their families.
“Some of the children lack ambition,” he said, referring to actual heirs. “Why go to college? Why start a business? Why work so hard? Once all your financial needs are met, it leads to deep-rooted low self-esteem and self-confidence because you've never really struggled.” Masu.”
Cockrell said he also saw it in the children of the show's matriarch, Logan Roy. “They have a lot of bravado, but behind that there's a lot of shallowness and fear,” he says.
Paul Hochmeyer, a family therapist who also works with the ultra-wealthy, explains how the second generation of ultra-wealthy families can be more troubled by their heritage than empowered by it. He said he was aware of it.
“They are always wondering if people like them for who they really are or for the trappings of wealth that decorate their lives,” he said in an email. He commented on the uncanny ability of wealth to isolate people from their surroundings. “They feel guilty for having so much of what the world aspires to, while at the same time feeling flawed, inadequate, and unhappy.”
As well as sowing seeds of self-doubt and isolation, the prospect of material wealth and its inheritance affects almost every relationship in the Inheritance. (See: Tom and Shiv.)
“Wealth is power,” Hochmeyer said, adding that when there is a wealth imbalance in a relationship, there is also an inherent power imbalance. Those who inherited family wealth say it reflects their own experiences.
“One factor that requires special attention when inheriting wealth is how others relate to us because of our wealth. In all of our relationships, wealth plays a role in It can be like a third party,” said Diana Chambers, who says she is a third-generation member of the former business. He now advises other families on managing their wealth and the emotional baggage that comes with it. “We may question the foundations of our friendship, struggle to decide how much to contribute to shared expenses, or get caught up in an undercurrent of envy directed at us.”
Chambers suggests that second and third generations of wealthy families develop a sense of independence and purpose before inheriting family money. Or, as she said, “If we receive an inheritance before we find impetus on our unique path, it can hinder our pursuit of the goals that are intrinsically motivating.”
Mental health experts who treat the ultra-wealthy say their adult children, like the Roys, can become dependent on their parents for much of their adult lives. And that's never going to slow down, Hochmeyer said.
Those born into ordinary circumstances may be motivated by ambition, but those born into great wealth tend to be plagued by a constant fear of losing their inheritance, he said. . “Their physical safety, tribal identity, and worthiness of love are conflated with material validation,” Hochmeyer said. “Money and inherent status and power are important in these families. [measuring] It is the standard by which we measure our worth as human beings. ”
One study found that “abundant experiences'' tend to increase with wealth, but for the adult children of the very rich, wealth seems to come with unhappiness and low self-esteem. health experts say. “It can manifest as impostor syndrome within yourself,” Cockrell says. “They project bravado, self-confidence, and sometimes even cruelty, onto others so that they are actually standing on feet of clay and never know when they will crumble.”
In other words, “Okay, Roman Roy.”
Hochmeyer argues that the psychological difference between those who acquire wealth and those who inherit it lies in whether one's sense of agency is internal or external, a concept known as the “locus of control.” He said that it is rooted in.
Hochmeyer says people who inherit wealth or marry suffer from outside locus of control. In other words, they perceive that the outcome of their lives is overwhelmingly determined by circumstances beyond their own agency, and this can erode their sense of self.
“When people become overwhelmed by the brilliance of their wealth, they are unable to develop a healthy and resilient self-concept,” he says. “They doubt their ability to make a substantial contribution to the world. They never know whether the praise they receive for their efforts is based on merit or appeasement. not.”
The second generation of the Roy family was plagued by self-doubt and often struggled to hide their true weaknesses from others. “You create this kind of protective shell, but underneath, we're all little nude turtles,” Tom Wambsguns tells his hapless cousin Greg in season 1, explaining the Roy family's golden rule. Masu.
“Succession” deftly captures the rage, self-doubt and family strife that characterize the lives of the ultra-wealthy, people who have worked with them say.
“They've packed it all into a single scenario, the Roy family,” says Nigel Nicholson, an organizational psychologist who specializes in conflict within family businesses. Nicholson, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, said the transition from the owner-founder generation to the second generation, as depicted in “Succession,” is a “classic scenario.” “He has two main conflicts that he needs to manage: parent-child conflict and sibling conflict.”
Sibling conflict is rooted in the psychology of the family ecology and is characterized by younger generations competing for parents' resources and attention, and intergenerational conflict is characterized by parents doubting their children's abilities. Nicholson said.
“The older generation believes they know what's best for the next generation, and the next generation believes they know what's best for them,” he said. Or, in the words of Logan Roy to his adult children, “I love you, but you guys aren't serious.”
Nicholson's advice for Logan Roy's generation is simple. Letting go is difficult for patriarchs and matriarchs who have dedicated their lives to growing their family empires. “Parents need to recognize that their children may have different and even better ideas, and that they have a fresh perspective,” Nicholson said.
What about Roy's children? Hochmeyer said they might have been better off being more attached to themselves instead of being attached to their father.
“The first thing I tell them is to stay away from their father,” said Hochmeyer, who believes he may have malignant narcissism, one of the most “toxic” personality disorders. Ta.
“He is incapable of forming relationships with other humans that allow for the vulnerability necessary for healthy intimacy,” he says. “They should stop trying to change or expecting anything different from him and focus on changing themselves and their reactions to him.”
