Sauron's Great Miscalculation

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

Was it turned into an external force when imparted into the Ring, independent of his own fea?

Thematically I would say yes. Within the logic of the narrative I would say that it probably had much the same effect upon him psychologically as other bearers.

I note this from "Myths Transformed" as well about Sauron's situation after the Ring's destruction:

[Sauron] was said to have fallen below the point of ever recovering, though he had previously recovered. What is probably meant is that a 'wicked' spirit becomes fixed in a certain desire or ambition, and if it cannot repent then this desire becomes virtually its whole being. But the desire may be wholly beyond the weakness it has fallen to, and it will then be unable to withdraw its attention from the unobtainable desire, even to attend to itself. It will then remain for ever in impotent desire or memory of desire.

It seems to me that it was because the Ring was so crucial to Sauron's ambitions, especially after he lost it, that it became such an object of obsession. When he had it, he needed it, and when he lost it he desperately wanted it back. Perhaps that's the source of how the Ring engendered obsession in all of its bearers, because by its nature it was an object that was utterly essential to the fulfilment of its maker's fixations and to his survival; perhaps it influenced others in the same way because that was what it was: a thing essential to Sauron, and thus essential to anyone who bore it for any length of time.

The thought also occurs that the creation of the Ring was an inevitable mistake for Sauron because it was the technological implementation of his god complex; it gave him fake omniscience and omnipotence (over other Ring bearers) and allowed him to bestow counterfeit immortality upon his servants. He wanted to be a god and the Ring (and Rings) seem to have been quite an effective (if ultimately rather pathetic) way that he could pretend to be one.