Playing the victim

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Playing the victim (also known as victim playing, victim card, or self-victimization) is the fabrication or exaggeration of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse to others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy, attention seeking or diffusion of responsibility. A person who repeatedly does this is known as a professional victim. An actual victim is someone or something that has been hurt, damaged, or killed or has suffered, either because of the actions of someone or something else, or because of illness or chance.

Contents

For abuse

Victim playing by abusers is either: [1] [2]

It is common for abusers to engage in victim playing. This serves two purposes:

For manipulation

Manipulators often play the victim role ("woe is me") by portraying themselves as victims of circumstances or someone else's behavior in order to gain pity or sympathy or to evoke compassion and thereby get something from someone. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering, and the manipulator often finds it easy and rewarding to play on sympathy to get cooperation. [3]

While portraying oneself as a victim can be highly successful in obtaining goals over the short-term, this method tends to be less successful over time. Dutch management scholar Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries writes that:

Victims' talent for high drama draws people to them like moths to a flame. Their permanent dire state brings out the altruistic motives in others. It is difficult to ignore constant cries for help. In most instances, however, the help given is of short duration. And like moths in a flame, helpers quickly get burned; nothing seems to work to alleviate the victims' miserable situation; there is no movement for the better. Any efforts rescuers make are ignored, belittled, or met with hostility. No wonder that the rescuers become increasingly frustrated – and walk away. [4]

Victim playing may also be an attention-seeking technique, as in Münchausen syndrome.

In political context

While failing to produce any affirmative values, the fetishistic lack of future is masked up by an excess of confirmation of its own status of victimhood, as noted by the Bosnian political theoretician Jasmin Hasanović, seeing it in the post-Yugoslav context as a form of auto-colonialism, where reproducing the narrative of victimhood corresponds with the balkanization stereotypes, being the very narrative of the colonizer where the permanence of war is the contemporaneity of fear, affirming the theses on eternal hatred thus strengthening ethnonationalism even more. [5]

In media

Selective portrayal of different groups or individuals as victims is used by the media to appeal to the sympathy of and mobilize both the political left and right. [6] Groups or individuals are often selected on the basis of class, race, ethnicity, gender, age and/or sexuality. [7]

In corporate life

The language of "victim playing" has entered modern corporate life, as a potential weapon of all professionals. [8] To define victim-players as dishonest may be an empowering response; [9] as too may be awareness of how childhood boundary issues can underlie the tactic. [10]

In the hustle of office politics, the term may however be abused so as to penalize the legitimate victim of injustice, as well as the role-player.[ citation needed ]

Underlying psychology

Transactional analysis distinguishes real victims from those who adopt the role in bad faith, ignoring their own capacities to improve their situation. [11] Among the predictable interpersonal "games" psychiatrist Eric Berne identified as common among by victim-players are "Look How Hard I've Tried" and "Wooden Leg". [12]

R. D. Laing considered that "it will be difficult in practice to determine whether or to what extent a relationship is collusive" – when "the one person is predominantly the passive 'victim'", [13] and when they are merely playing the victim. The problem is intensified once a pattern of victimization has been internalised, perhaps in the form of a double bind. [14]

Object relations theory has explored the way possession by a false self can create a permanent sense of victimisation [15] – a sense of always being in the hands of an external fate. [16]

To break the hold of the negative complex, and to escape the passivity of victimhood, requires taking responsibility for one's own desires and long-term actions. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victimology</span> Study of victimization

Victimology is the study of victimization, including the psychological effects on victims, the relationship between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system—that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials—and the connections between victims and other social groups and institutions, such as the media, businesses, and social movements.

Transactional analysis is a psychoanalytic theory and method of therapy wherein social interactions are analyzed to determine the ego state of the communicator as a basis for understanding behavior. In transactional analysis, the communicator is taught to alter the ego state as a way to solve emotional problems. The method deviates from Freudian psychoanalysis, which focuses on increasing awareness of the contents of subconsciously held ideas. Eric Berne developed the concept and paradigm of transactional analysis in the late 1950s.

Blame is the act of censuring, holding responsible, or making negative statements about an individual or group that their actions or inaction are socially or morally irresponsible, the opposite of praise. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong, their action is blameworthy. By contrast, when someone is morally responsible for doing something right, it may be said that their action is praiseworthy. There are other senses of praise and blame that are not ethically relevant. One may praise someone's good dress sense, and blame their own sense of style for their own dress sense.

Acquaintance rape is rape that is perpetrated by a person who knows the victim. Examples of acquaintances include someone the victim is dating, a classmate, co-worker, employer, family member, spouse, counselor, therapist, religious official, or medical doctor. Acquaintance rape includes a subcategory of incidents labeled date rape that involves people who are in romantic or sexual relationships with each other. When a rape is perpetrated by a college student on another student, the term campus rape is sometimes used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karpman drama triangle</span> Model of human interaction proposed in 1968

The Karpman drama triangle is a social model of human interaction proposed by San Francisco psychiatrist Stephen B. Karpman in 1968. The triangle maps a type of destructive interaction that can occur among people in conflict. The drama triangle model is a tool used in psychotherapy, specifically transactional analysis. The triangle of actors in the drama are persecutors, victims, and rescuers.

Abuse is the improper usage or treatment of a person or thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, crimes, or other types of aggression. To these descriptions, one can also add the Kantian notion of the wrongness of using another human being as means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. Some sources describe abuse as "socially constructed", which means there may be more or less recognition of the suffering of a victim at different times and societies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bullying</span> Use of force or coercion to abuse or intimidate others

Bullying is the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception of an imbalance of physical or social power. This imbalance distinguishes bullying from conflict. Bullying is a subcategory of aggressive behavior characterized by hostile intent, imbalance of power and repetition over a period of time.

The Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, known simply as the SANU Memorandum, was a draft document produced by a 16-member committee of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) from 1985 to 1986.

Mind games are actions performed for reasons of psychological one-upmanship, often employing passive–aggressive behavior to specifically demoralize or dis-empower the thinking subject, making the aggressor look superior. It also describes the unconscious games played by people engaged in ulterior transactions of which they are not fully aware, and which transactional analysis considers to form a central element of social life all over the world.

Victimisation is the state or process of being victimised or becoming a victim. The field that studies the process, rates, incidence, effects, and prevalence of victimisation is called victimology.

Emotional blackmail and FOG are terms popularized by psychotherapist Susan Forward about controlling people in relationships and the theory that fear, obligation and guilt (FOG) are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled. Understanding these dynamics is useful to anyone trying to extricate themself from the controlling behavior of another person and deal with their own compulsions to do things that are uncomfortable, undesirable, burdensome, or self-sacrificing for others.

Script analysis is the method of uncovering the "early decisions, made unconsciously, as to how life shall be lived". It is one of the five clusters in transactional analysis, involving "a progression from structural analysis, through transactional and game analysis, to script analysis". Eric Berne, the father of transactional analysis, focused on individual and group psychotherapy but today, transactional analysis and script analysis is considered in organisational settings, educational settings and coaching settings.

Role suction is a term introduced in the United States by Fritz Redl in the mid-20th century to describe the power of a social group to allocate roles to its members.

Victim mentality is a psychological concept referring to a mindset in which a person, or group of people, tends to recognize or consider themselves a victim of the negative actions of others. In some cases, those with a victim mentality have in fact been the victim of wrongdoing by others or have otherwise suffered misfortune through no fault of their own. The term is also used in reference to the tendency for blaming one's misfortunes on somebody else's misdeeds, which is also referred to as victimism.

While psychopaths typically represent a very small percentage of workplace staff, the presence of psychopathy in the workplace, especially within senior management, can do enormous damage. Indeed, psychopaths are usually most present at higher levels of corporate structure, and their actions often cause a ripple effect throughout an organization, setting the tone for an entire corporate culture. Examples of detrimental effects include increased bullying, conflict, stress, staff turnover, absenteeism, and reduction in both productivity and social responsibility. Ethical standards of entire organisations can be badly damaged if a corporate psychopath is in charge. A 2017 UK study found that companies with leaders who show "psychopathic characteristics" destroy shareholder value, tending to have poor future returns on equity.

The feminist pathways perspective is a feminist perspective of criminology which suggests victimization throughout the life course is a key risk factor for women's entry into offending.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elder financial abuse</span>

Elder financial abuse is a type of elder abuse in which misappropriation of financial resources or abusive use of financial control, in the context of a relationship where there is an expectation of trust, causes harm to an older person.

Intersectionality is the interconnection of race, class, and gender. Violence and intersectionality connect during instances of discrimination and/or bias. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a feminist scholar, is widely known for developing the theory of intersectionality in her 1989 essay, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics". Crenshaw's analogy of intersectionality to the flow of traffic explains, "Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination."

Isolation is often used to facilitate power and control over someone for an abusive purpose. This applies in many contexts such as workplace bullying, elder abuse, domestic abuse, child abuse, and cults.

Lilie Chouliaraki is Chair in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). Chouliaraki’s main area of research is the mediation of human vulnerability and suffering. Her publications have pioneered an interdisciplinary research field in Media and Communications Ethics, focusing on three areas of research:

References

  1. ↑ Bailey-Rug C (2015) Life After Narcissistic Abuse
  2. ↑ Bailey-Rug C (2016) It's Not You, It's Them: When People Are More Than Selfish
  3. ↑ Simon, George K (1996). In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People. A.J. Christopher. ISBN   978-0-9651696-0-8.
  4. ↑ Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries (2014). Are you a victim of the victim syndrome? Organizational Dynamics 43, pp 130-137 https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2014.03.007
  5. ↑ Hasanović J. (2021). Mirroring Europeanization: Balkanization and Auto-Colonial Narrative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp 93 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110684216-004
  6. ↑ Sally R. Munt (2016): Argumentum ad misericordiam: the cultural politics of victim media, Feminist Media Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2016.1259176
  7. ↑ https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/326247912.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]
  8. ↑ Susan A. DePhillips, Corporate Confidential (2005) p. 65
  9. ↑ Anthony C. Mersino, Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers (2007) p. 60 and p. 43
  10. ↑ Mersino, p. 104
  11. ↑ Petruska Clarkson, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy (London 1997) p. 217
  12. ↑ Eric Berne, Games People Play (Penguin 1964) p. 92 and p. 141-2
  13. ↑ R. D. Laing, Self and Others (Penguin 1969) p. 108
  14. ↑ Laing, p. 145
  15. ↑ Neville Symington, Narcissism: A New Theory (London 1993) p. 116
  16. ↑ Michael Parsons, The Dove that Returns, the Dove that Vanishes (London 2000) p. 34
  17. ↑ Polly Young-Eisendrath, Women and Desire (London 2000) p. 201 and p. 30
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