On being a scapegoat. For those of you that have ever experienced being made a scapegoat in a small community as I have I hope here to offer a little sympathy and understanding on what that feels like. This definition caught my eye from the internet; In ancient Greece a cripple or beggar or criminal (the pharmakos) was cast out of the community, either in response to a natural disaster (such as a plague, famine or an invasion) or in response to a calendrical crisis (such as the end of the year). In the Bible, the goat for Azazel was a goat that was designated to be outcast in the desert as part of the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement,that began during the Exodus with the original Tabernacle and continued through the times of the temples in Jerusalem. In psychology and sociology, the practice of selecting someone as a scapegoat has led to the concept of scapegoating. A modern psychological description maybe defined as..... Scapegoating is a hostile social - psychological discrediting routine by which people move blame and responsibility away from themselves and towards a target person or group. It is also a practice by which angry feelings and feelings of hostility may be projected, via inappropriate accusation, towards others. The target feels wrongly persecuted and receives misplaced vilification, blame and criticism; he is likely to suffer rejection from those who the perpetrator seeks to influence. Scapegoating has a wide range of focus: from approved enemies of very large groups of people down to the scapegoating of individuals by other individuals. Distortion is always a feature. OUTLINE OF SCAPEGOATING PSYCHO-DYNAMICS In scapegoating, feelings of guilt, aggression, blame and suffering are transferred away from a person or group so as to fulfill an unconscious drive to resolve or avoid such bad feelings. This is done by the displacement of responsibility and blame to another who serves as a target for blame both for the scapegoater and his supporters. The scapegoating process can be understood as an example of the Drama Triangle concept [Karpman, 1968]. The perpetrators drive to displace and transfer responsibility away from himself may not be experienced with full consciousness - self-deception is often a feature. The targets knowledge that he is being scapegoated builds slowly and follows events. The scapegoaters target experiences exclusion, ostracism or even expulsion. In so far as the process is unconscious it is more likely to be denied by the perpetrator. In such cases, any bad feelings - such as the perpetrators own shame and guilt - are also likely to be denied. Scapegoating frees the perpetrator from some self-dissatisfaction and provides some narcissistic gratification to him. It enables the self-righteous discharge of aggression. Scapegoaters tend to have extra-punitive characteristics [Kraupl-Taylor, 1953]. Scapegoating also can be seen as the perpetrators defense mechanism against unacceptable emotions such as hostility and guilt. In Kleinian terms, scapegoating is an example of projective identification, with the primitive intent of splitting: separating the good from the bad [Scheidlinger, 1982]. On another view, scapegoaters are insecure people driven to raise their own status by lowering the status of their target [Carter, 1996]. Well, all very technical I’m sure but it does sum up my position entirely. I feel I’m in a playground with a lot of very angry children whose only purpose in life is to bully somebody and a for a very obscure reason they have chosen me. I don’t take any of it personally and these people make fools of themselves when doing this in public. I find it tedious and rather boring. Unfortunately one of these “children” is a grown and violent man who has subjected me to a beating. He has been reported to the police. As I said all very boring and tedious. The key for me anyway is to rise above it and always hand back their bad behaviour in a calm way.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 10:19:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015