Psychodynamics of Scapegoating, Persecution, Bullying
Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil but as a necessity, or even a duty. Simone Weil. Gravity and Grace. 1947.
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness. Thomas Carlyle.
When love and hate clash, either we feel guilt and make appeasment, or we are persecuted by guilt. Or we can pervert the truth..
Holman Hunt. The Scapegoat
Scapegoating in group psychotherapy is scene as an example of projective identification. The seeking of a scapegoat in a group can be seen as a form of resistance, or defence against impulses, wishes or behaviour that needs to be repressed, denied, or in some way removed from consciousness as belonging to the self. The scapegoat is always reacted to because he demonstrates traits that other group members reject.
The group-selected scapegoat may have been a scapegoat in his family of origin, and he may have displayed provocative behaviour that puts him in this position in relation to the other group members. His transference’s towards other group members are those selected from his childhood experiences and others are seen as potential persecutors, or figures who might hurtfully neglect or ignore or humiliate in some way.
Although scapegoating, abuse and bullying can perhaps best be seen as an interaction, in which two or more people are engaged in a relationship in which both may share the underlying feeling of being victims in life and a long-term sense of persecution, the literature concerning the psychology and psycho pathology of the perpetrator is also of interest. I will examine this evidence in this section.
Research supports the view that the most dangerous people are those who have a strong desire to regard themselves as superior beings (Bushman & Baumeister, 1998). According to these authors, narcissists are emotionally invested in establishing their superiority, but they are not convinced that they have achieved this superiority. High self-esteem involves thinking well of oneself but narcissism, on the other hand, involves a powerful wish to think well of oneself. They found that narcissists were exceptionally aggressive towards someone who had given them a bad evaluation. When they received praise, their level of aggression was not out of the ordinary. The authors conclude that narcissists mainly want to punish or defeat someone who has threatened their highly favourable views of themselves. People who are preoccupied with validating a grandiose self-image apparently find criticism highly upsetting and lash out against the source of it.
The perpetrators of abuse or victimisation tend to see the actions of others as attacks on themselves and numerous studies have found that, for example, bullies, wife-beaters, tyrants, and other violent people tend to think that other people are attacking or belittling them, even when others do not have the same interpretation of events. There seems to be an intimate connection, therefore, with issues of shame and humiliation. They interpreted relatively neutral and agreeable interactions as attempts to dominate others aggressively. Their world view seemed to be based on a lack of trust in others, and on deeply rooted internal working models that relationships must be based on winning or losing, domination and subservience, and triumph or shame and humiliation (Nasby, et al, 1980). Studies of family violence have also shown that men who display aggression towards their families have a tendency to view apparently unremarkable acts or words by family members as deliberate personal attacks (Goldstein & Rosenbaum, 1985).
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