Jonah is a character in the Bible. He used to be a pious Christian, yearning for any assignment from God. At last God commissioned him a glorious task to announce the absolution of Nineveh, a city which would have rotten and perished in its sins. Nevertheless Jonah refused the task, ran away and hid from God who he worshipped. The majesty of God searched him, roused him, punished him and even sent a big fish to swallow him. Stuck in caprice and hesitation time and again, he finally repented of his cowardice and fulfilled his assignment, the absolution of Ninevites. “Jonah” is referred to those who long for growth and maturity but fear it because of some inherent obstacles. In the case of Jonah, the reason for his refusing to take the task is enmity. It comes down to this, Nineveh, the city to be absolved was the murderer of his family.
It was a sublime task to make the announcement in Nineveh as God orders, the glory of which Jonah himself had also yearned for a long time. However, once the dream came true, he felt such dread and helplessness as to evade the oncoming success and glory. In psychology this fear of success is known as “the Jonah Complex”.
The traits of Jonah Complex consisted of two aspects, one for self, one for others. For oneself, the Jonah Complex means shrinking away from maturity, getting obssessed and refusing to take the burden of greatness; For others, the Jonah Complex means envying eminence of others, suffering when others are blessed and sneering at others’ ill fate.
Put it simply, that means fear of growth, which originates from a hypothesis in psychodynamics that people are not only afraid of failure, but also success, revealing a pathetic fear of one's greatness. It is a kind of emotional condition, luring us into fear of doing what we are good at or even evasion of exploiting our potentials. In daily life, Jonah Complex unenterprising, or called “false stupidity”.
Maslow Abraham once put forward these questions to his postgraduate students on a lecture, "Who among you dreams to compose the greatest novel in American history?” “Who is doomed to be the next Saint?” “Who aspires to be a great leader?” and so on. According to his record, most common reactions of his students in this situation are chucking, flushing and quivering. Then Maslow asked another question: “Or are you secretly planning to write some sort of extraordinary book on psychology?” As a response, again they flushed, stammered and equivocated. Still the professor insisted and questioned: “Don’t you even want to be a psychologist?” Someone answered: “Well, of course.” Maslow spoke:"So you want to be a mute, scrupulous psychologist? What good can that do? Now, that is not an ideal way to maximize yourself."
Truely there exists some sort of Jonah Complex within us, namely, the tendency to avoid instead of pursuit nobleness,eminence and lofty virtues.People tend to see purity as naïveness, honesty as credulity, frankness as ignorance, generosity as lack of judgment, passion at work as cowadice and compassion as cheap blindness, etc.
Furthermore the problem of Jonah Complex lies in that "Jonah"s are not only afraid of being famous but also envious when they see others become famous, only too glad to see them out of luck. This kind of mentality, defined by Maslow as Jonah Complex, is an obstacle to one' maturity and fulfillment.
Enmity, or resentment, is a most common inner obstacle in the way of growth. It is frequently observed that some smart boy, graded high in school, somehow fell sick right on the eve of the university entrance examination, and lost the chance to take it. Later on, he got a job and was appreciated for his abilities, whereas he quitted again right before a crucial promotion. Though all this seems to be contingent, but when we enter his internal world, we will discover that buried deep down there is his unrelieved resentment of his parents. Just for this desire of vengeance against his parents, he destroyed himself subconsciously. His latent plan is no more than this: “YOU are definitely not expecting a successful son, because it is I, your son that is gonna let you down!”
As for women, the unconscious conviction behind the terror of growth and success can be translated into words like this: “If I am far too prominent, there will be no proper man for me, and I will end up lonely.” To women with this belief, “self realization” look the same as “losing love”. The need of love and self realization are both so important that depression on either will bring forward a trend of neurosis in personality.
These internal conflicts can sometimes be revealed, yet on most conditons, they are oppressed in subconsciousness.
People feel afraid and unsafe not only at the bottom of life, but also at the top. The extreme form of Jonah Complex is “Self-destruction Complex”. That is, when confronted with glory, success, blessedness and any other similar fair, treasurable things, the thoughts of "I do not deserve this" and "I cannot bear it!"are always the very first that come to mind which diminish the opportunity.
Deep within, most of us have this Jonah Complex. As is analyzed by psychologists, it is because when we are young, thoughts like “I am not able” or “I cannot” can easily creep into our minds due to the restrictions and immaturity of body and mind. And if the surroundings don’t provide us with enough senses of security and opportunities for our growth, these ideas will accompany us all along. These thoughts shall betray themselves sometimes, especially the moment opportunities befall us That’s because grasping opportunities means making considerable efforts, confronting unpredictable variabilities and risking painstaking failures.
Without doubt, Jonah Complex manifests a way to counterbalance the inner pressures. In fact everyone has possible access to success, but few venture to break the inner balance when they come around, recognize and overcome the Jonah Complex within them, take the responsibilities and pressures, and finally seize it. That also accounts for a hard fact, that most of the time only a handful of us can make it to the top while most people remain mediocre.