VICTIM ANGER
According to the principles of geometry, an infinite
number of lines can be drawn through a single point,
To define any one particular line, however, two points
are needed.
The same sort of principle applies to psychology. The
experience of one trauma, for example, does not tell you
much about your unconscious, because any explanation
is as good as any other, If you are raped once, or if you
get in a car crash, no one has a right to point at you
and say, "You did this wrong," or "You did that wrong."
It's simply impossible to deduce anything psychological
from one event.
But if the trauma is repeated, then you have two points
to define a line that can be tracked back into the past
and projected into the future. This is the time to sit up
and take notice, because if you don't, there will likely be
a third time, And there may be others again, until you
start to look at your life and ask yourself what is going
on.
This concept of psychological repetition, however, has
nothing to do with naturally recurring cycles. If your
neighbor wakes you up early every morning when he
goes to work, for example, you might feel angry, but this
isn't victim anger.
Repetition refers to an unconscious process by which
you essentially lead yourself into trouble over and over,
For some dark, unknown reason, you so despise yourself
that you continually put yourself at physical or psychological
risk, And the failure to accept that this unconscious
process has you trapped in its clutches leads
to victim anger,
As trauma after trauma batters you, you will begin to
say, "Why me? This isn't fair!" You will blame anyone
who gets in your way. You will feel like an innocent
victim being persecuted by the world, You might even
become a psychological "terrorist" whose unconscious
objective is to undermine the structure of any authority
perceived to be unjust and uncaring. But because you
can't look at your responsibility in what is happening,
you will develop a victim mentality, believing that every
painful event in your life is "their" fault, and you will
have fallen into victim anger.
A careful distinction must be made here in regard
to "naturally" repeated child abuse and repetition.
When a child is abused, it cannot be claimed that
the child has any responsibility for the abuse. Vio-
lence is always the responsibility of the perpetrator,
and, when violence is repeated, the perpetrator is
at fault.This repeated abuse is therefore not a result
of the child's unconscious desires.
But there is a psychodynamic process called lden-
tification with the Aggressor in which the a bused
child, in trying to make sense of something essen-
tially senseless, comes to believe that the abuse
must somehow be justified, and the child will there-
fore unconsciously seek to befriend, and even imi-
tate, the abuser. With this dynamic in place, blame
and anger toward the abuser becomes turned to-
ward the self, thus beginning the repetition of an
unconscious, self-inflicted abuse.
In fact, scientific research has shown that adults
who were sexually abused as children tend to have
a high risk for sexual assault (e.g., rape) as adults.
Moreover, the research shows that adult sexual as-
sault victims who were also abused as children tend
to have even lower levels of mental health function-
ing than those persons who were sexually abused
as children but not revictimized as adults.
