Contrasting Emotions of Victory and Defeat - A Psychoanalytic Approach

This article reproduces part of my dissertation research project for an MA in Management and Organisational Dynamics at Essex University

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Players in a sports team can derive much joy from victory. It gives a real sense of satisfaction that all the personal sacrifice has been worthwhile and provides a cathartic release from the fear of failure, shame and humiliation. Equally, defeat can cast a shadow of gloom and despair over the participants for days, weeks, sometimes years or the rest of their career. In spectator sports these emotions also extend to the vicarious participants, the sporting fans.

"Some people think football is a matter of

 life and death. I don't like that attitude. 

I can assure them it is much more serious than that" [1]

Why do people play sport and thus willingly expose themselves to the risk of these extreme opposing emotions? This question can only be answered by understanding how participants deal with the uncertainty of success and the unpredictability of failure, the very essence and attraction of sport.

I have played in, coached and watched competitive team sport for over forty years. I have observed teams who appeared invincible and who played with belief, skill, stamina and trust in their teammates to overcome the opposition. Equally, I have seen teams where players seemed openly to question their desire to be on the pitch, where the normal behaviour was aggression, team members distrusted each other and defeat was the inevitable outcome of stepping onto the pitch. Often, confusingly, one emotional extreme was followed a week later by the opposite with the same team and participants. As Lionel Stapley states in the title of his book “It’s an emotional game” (2002).

The conventional view holds that teams are happiest and most fulfilled in the elation of victory and most desolate in the reality of defeat. Yet there is also a value placed on the importance of being a ‘good loser’ and playing a fair game according to the rules. This Corinthian ideal, rooted in the British education system, assumed that sport could teach, on the playing field, virtues complementary to those learnt in the classroom - team spirit, fair play, bravery, pluck, swiftness of judgment, deference to arbitration, attention to detail and mastery of rules (Fernández-Armesto, 2009). In contrast to these desirable qualities, there are examples of teams or individuals who are viewed as bad winners and seen as arrogant, triumphant, narcissistic, mean or cruel in their victories.

Victory and Defeat - The Contrasting Emotions

I found little research in this area, where it exists it is found within the separate areas of sports psychology and psychoanalytic consideration of sportspeople undertaking individual sports such as golf, swimming or athletics. Many sports teams actively utilise a sports psychologist to assist them in preparing for, and responding to, competitive engagement. In the field of research, the focus of sports psychology appears to rest largely on motivation, preparation for competition and managing the subsequent response to results. These psychological techniques rely on visualisation and cognitive approaches and frequently address the issue of athlete arousal (in this application arousal refers to the intensity of involvement in the activity). They do not, however, appear to consider the source or cause of anxieties or how the  environment contributes to the reaction of the athlete.

The former test cricketer and Endland captain Mike Brearley (who qualified as a psychoanalyst on his retirement from cricket) is one of those who considered how psychoanalysis  could contribute to understanding how sports teams operate. I found that sources on psychoanalytic considerations in sport are mainly concerned with individual sports such as athletics, golf and tennis. In his book It’s an Emotional Game, Lionel Stapley (2002) wrote about his experiences from three years consulting to a manager of a professional football team in the English Football League. Stapley’s work included a psychoanalytic analysis of stress and considered the effect of anxiety on performance. One of the most compelling contributions has been made by John-Henry Carter who reflected on his experiences of playing rugby union as a professional player, his retirement and subsequent return to competitive play. Carter explicitly thought about issues of victory and defeat in team sport from the perspective of a player who was, at the time, a trainee psychoanalyst. It was immersion research; drawing conclusions from personal, direct experience and living within the day-to-day reality of a sports team. 

I differentiate psychology, which focusses primarily on psychological considerations of the individual, and the distinctly separate method of psychodynamically interpreting the behaviours of sports teams by understanding hidden subconscious feelings and beliefs of individuals and how, in turn, these influence their teammates and the team’s performance. 

In 1992, Daniel Begel, a specialist in sports psychiatry, reviewed team sports in his field and commented on the lack of relevant work. He observed that, “consulting work with athletic teams, whose primary mission is to win, needs to be reported on and understood in the context of … group therapy”. Begel was writing twenty-five years ago and it appears that there have been only limited contributions in the intervening period. 

It was this gap in the field of knowledge that I decided to investigate.

[1] Quote attributed to Bill Shankley, OBE, manager of Liverpool FC between 1959 and 1974.