Types of victims and types of personal victimization: general characteristics

The concept of victimization in psychology

Some psychologists express the opinion that there is a special victim behavior. This behavioral model implies that a person constantly finds himself in the position of a victim, attracting rapists, maniacs and other people who like to make fun of him.

The concept of “victimization” first appeared in criminology. There is even a corresponding branch of criminology - victimology, which studies the process of becoming a victim of a crime. Subsequently, some psychotherapists armed themselves with this concept, who began to view victimization as a complex of pathological properties of a person who constantly finds himself in the position of a victim. Nowadays, this phenomenon is studied in various spheres of human life, but most of all in family relationships.

A person suffering from this “pathology” constantly finds himself in unpleasant situations in which he is harmed in some way. In this case, the cause of harm can be not only another person, but also anything: an animal, bad weather, a natural disaster, any unfortunate combination of circumstances.

Proponents of the existence of victimization may encounter objections, because it seems that they are blaming the victims for the misfortunes that happen to them: the notorious “it’s your own fault” argument. In reality this is not the case. The guilt of the criminal in the crime has not yet been canceled, as well as the accident in circumstances and the existence of natural disasters. It's just that some researchers have noticed certain patterns in terms of, for example, how criminals choose their victims or why some people attract the unhealthy attention of villains, while others do not.

Proponents of this phenomenon point out that victimization behavior is especially characteristic of adolescents. A person at this age is endowed with enormous ambitions and qualities - such as youthful maximalism; however, insufficient knowledge of life leads to the fact that, under the influence of his ambitions, he constantly finds himself in unpleasant situations. Dissatisfaction with the result gives rise to the desire to “take revenge,” which leads to new troubles - and so on.

It has been noticed that some people tend to enter into conflicts over the slightest issue, even when disagreements can be avoided. On the other hand, no one doubts that school hooligans choose a special type of classmates for their atrocities - physically weak, naive, vulnerable, stupid, stooped, with a mincing gait, etc. Such people behave “funny” and cannot give back.

Question 40. Psychological aspects of victimization of crime victims.

Victimology is the science that studies victims. The goal of criminal victimological research is to identify the causes and conditions under which a person becomes a victim of a crime.

A victim of a crime is an individual who has suffered moral, physical or property harm from a crime, regardless of whether or not a decision has been made to recognize such a person as a victim.

Victimization or victimogenicity are “physical, mental and social traits and characteristics acquired by a person” that “may make him predisposed to becoming a victim of crime.” It is quite difficult to make a constructive distinction between these two types of victimization. For example, a number of studies have found that:

• the victim of a murder is characterized by imprudence, excessive risk-taking, conflict, a tendency to aggression, egocentrism, alcohol abuse, often the victim is familiar with the criminal;

• rape victims are often promiscuous, eccentric, or, conversely, indecisive, personally immature, have no experience of sexual relations, and childish;

• victims of torture in most cases are familiar with the offender and are in one way or another dependent on him (wife, cohabitant, child, mother); by nature they are often weak-willed and do not have stable life positions or formed interests, sometimes lead an immoral lifestyle, often their social status is higher than the status of a torturer;

• victims of scammers are overly gullible, incompetent, gullible, in some cases greedy or experiencing financial difficulties, and often superstitious.

Practical use of victimological data. Data about the victim can be useful both for studying the causes and conditions of crime and victimization, and for solving specific problems of the investigation - finding the person who committed the crime, qualifying his act, determining the degree of guilt, differentiating punishment, and taking adequate preventive measures.

For example, generalization of information about the victims of serial sexual murders (age, lifestyle, socio-psychological status, etc.), methods of committing the crime (unexpected attacks, luring the victim through deception, absence or presence on the victim’s body of traces of sadistic actions, torture, etc. .) helps create a psychological portrait of the attacker and makes it easier to find him.

Establishing the state of the victim (in particular, the state of helplessness or dependence on the criminal) can help to correctly qualify the criminal act, determine the presence and degree of guilt of the offender, and differentiate punishment.

Typing situations of interaction between the criminal and the victim, taking into account the role of the persons who are harmed, allows not only to understand the features of the determination of criminal actions, but also to help in developing ways of optimal behavior of a potential victim. Developing and teaching skills to resist victimization is one of the areas of victimological prevention.

Question 41. Psychology of the victim and witness.

Psychology of the victim

The victim is one of the central figures of the preliminary investigation. The specific circumstances, causes and conditions of the crime cannot be fully disclosed if the identity of the victim is not taken into account. The testimony of the victim is a means of protecting his interests, both individual and as a member of society. The formation of the victim’s testimony has its own characteristics associated with their specific experiences, which are caused by the criminal consequences carried out against them. Mental experiences of victims, especially in cases where the criminal act is to one degree or another directed against the life, health, and dignity of the individual. The most typical reaction of victims to an attack situation is a state of fear . As an emotional reflection of danger, fear is caused by a lack of self-confidence and a lack of information about a favorable way out of the current situation. In a state of fear, the victim often exaggerates the danger, incorrectly perceives events, storing them in memory in an exaggerated form (the victim increases the number of attackers, their strength, the use of improvised and other means, etc.). In conditions of struggle, victims often remember poorly or incorrectly the signs of the criminal; they do not remember the sequence and individual moments of the event. If there are several criminals, the victim may not remember which of them was the first and what violent acts he committed. The investigator must take into account the dynamics of the mental state of the victims. Repeatedly reviewing what happened, they actively reconstruct past events under the influence of feelings of shame, resentment, humiliation, revenge, and sometimes aggressiveness. Victims of sexual violence experience a feeling of depression, apathy , and doom, aggravated by ideas about possible pregnancy and infection with sexually transmitted diseases. Often, the testimony of this category of victims is deliberately distorted in order to conceal their unseemly actions. Many victims are characterized by a state of increased level of anxiety and, as a consequence, destabilization of personal mental integrity and impaired social adaptation. Victims often have to participate in numerous interrogations and confrontations, repeatedly go to the scene of the crime, and identify the participants in the crime. Under these conditions, victims can involuntarily form a mechanism of mental defense against repeated psycho-traumatic influences. Intense inhibition processes can significantly complicate obtaining from the victim the information necessary for the investigation. The desire to get out of the investigation can lead to hasty, conforming testimony and agreement with the investigator’s assumptions. The possible impact on the victim on the part of the accused should also be taken into account. The investigator needs to be sensitive to the dynamics of the victim’s mood.

Psychology of witnesses

Witness testimony plays an important role in the activities of investigators and judges, defense attorneys and attorneys, prosecutors and inspectors. They help to restore the circumstances of the preparation or commission of a crime, identify the persons who committed the crime, the motives of their criminal acts, and establish socio-psychological data that characterize the personality of the accused or victim. In psychological terms, witness testimony is a reproduction of previously formed impressions, updating of images and actions that occurred. In this case, it is very important how correctly and adequately the process of perception occurred in a given witness, what are the features of preserving and reconstructing the formed images in the memory of a given person.

Errors and errors in the testimony of witnesses (incompleteness, inaccuracy, unnecessary speculation, etc.) are a common, not an exceptional phenomenon. Therefore, the investigator must identify inconsistencies in the testimony of witnesses and understand the reason for the untruthfulness of the testimony. When a witness tells a lie, he usually loses his composure, begins to make unnecessary body movements, often changes his posture, changes his facial expressions, and eye movements. The motives for deceptive testimony of a witness can be: family responsibilities, misunderstanding of the feeling of friendship; personal interest of the witness (envy, hatred, vindictiveness, self-interest, etc.); a feeling of sympathy for the accused or victim; threats from interested parties, etc. In the interpretation of experts, the psychology of deception is characterized by duality and great internal difficulties. In the mind of a person giving false testimony, there are two parallel versions of the event: one is what actually happened and he wants to hide it, and the second is a fictional one that he wants to talk about. In the imagination of such a person, true events are constantly present and these ideas have a vivid and persistent character. The deceiver is forced to constantly muffle them and change them to fictitious images that are paler and weaker. He has to maneuver all the time between truth and deception, and, however, the truth constantly “gets into his head,” so the deceiver constantly risks letting it slip and he needs to strain not to forget what he said earlier and remember all his inventions in great detail. Hence, one can feel the roteness and non-payment of fraudulent testimony. If in truthful testimony there are often inaccuracies, then in fraudulent testimony everything is always smooth, everything is well rigged to the extent of the intellectual development of the witness. The investigator must keep these mental states in mind and carefully analyze the information provided by witnesses.

Victimization and its types

Since victimization is a complex set of behavioral acts, researchers identify a number of its types according to different parameters:

• According to the behavior of the victim: guilty and innocent. In the first case, the victim actually provokes the aggressor or deliberately ends up in a dangerous situation; in the second case, a person falls into the victim state by accident or does not deliberately provoke the aggressor. Example: in the first case, a group of people beat up a gopnik who himself threatened to attack them. In the second case, the gopnik himself “runs into” a person who looks physically weak.
• By number of victims: individual and mass. In the first case, one person becomes the victim; in the second - some kind of social group (for example, representatives of a certain nationality).

Origin

According to the etymological dictionary, the word is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic. It contained the verb “to eat,” which meant “to sacrifice.” Scientists see here the influence of the Greek language, for the word geras and the object of study go back to the same basis. By the way, the Greek word means “honorable gift,” because sacrifice was originally understood as “a gift to the deity.”

What is victimization behavior

We said above that the behavior of the victim may or may not provoke the criminal. Criminologists, however, distinguish two types of active victim behavior. In the first case, she actually provokes the attacker to commit a crime: she threatens, robs, strikes, etc. In the second case, the victim does not want to provoke anyone, but her actions somehow contribute to the activities of the criminal. For example, an incompetent doctor only aggravated the patient’s illness, and the patient (or one of his relatives) begins to take revenge.

Psychologists also distinguish such types of victim behavior as comfortable and emotionally unstable. In the first case, the person seems to consciously choose the role of the victim; often he even admires the presence of the rapist next to him, because he sees in him a “strong personality.” Such victims are usually timid, fearful and insecure people with low self-esteem; with all this, they are characterized by resentment towards the entire world around them, they constantly complain.

In the second case, a person tries to be a rapist himself: he starts a conflict, gets into a fight; Such people tend to offend and humiliate the weak. When they encounter a stronger opponent, they take on the role of the victim. It is about such people that the proverb says: “A daredevil is among sheep, but before a daredevil there is a sheep.”

Sometimes it happens that people who are physically and psychologically strong and self-confident find themselves in the role of a victim; they consciously choose sacrifice to defend their principles or protect someone from injustice. Such actions may outwardly resemble victimized behavior, but they are not pathological and are justified in a moral and psychological sense.

Meaning

The explanatory dictionary gives the historical meaning as the first one. But let’s look at them all to see the whole picture:

1. In ancient religions: an object or living creature brought as a gift to a deity (killed), as well as the offering of this gift (sacrifice). For example: “We have made a sacrifice to the gods, then our journey should be easy.”
2. Voluntary abandonment of someone or something in favor of another, self-sacrifice. Characteristic of high style. “He sacrificed his career for her well-being.”
3. A victim of someone or something. A person suffering from violence, failure, misfortune. For example: “He fell victim to a villainous fate.”
4. The meaning of the noun “donation” is similar. Currently considered obsolete.

What meanings of the word “victim” are most popular now? From the list of positions 2 and 3. The first meaning is relevant only for those who love books about ancient cults and sometimes reread the Old Testament. 4 meaning is hopelessly outdated, so we will work today only with the essential.

Causes of victimization

Why does a person choose “victim behavior”? After all, it is known that every healthy individual strives not to show his weaknesses, including to potential enemies, to avoid conflicts and dangerous situations. The well-known “instinct of self-preservation” is at work here (which, however, is not an instinct, since such a category does not exist in the human psyche).

There are several reasons why a person begins to behave “unconventionally” and take on the role of a victim.

:

• Uncertainty, low self-esteem, anxiety, emotional instability;
• Domestic violence, as well as victim syndrome in parents;
• Unfavorable environment in which the person grew up or is located;
• Mental disorders and diseases;
• Excessive parental care in childhood;
• Maximalism, high self-esteem, the desire to prove that one is right by any means, as well as an attempt to “test one’s strength”; This is particularly true during adolescence.

There are also some factors that somehow cause “victim behavior”. For example

:

• Being in a state of submission. In this case, the person fulfills the demands of the attacker, but does it uncertainly and sluggishly, which causes aggression from the rapist.
• Explicit and defiant behavior by a person in the presence of the abuser, or habitual behavior that the abuser finds “offensive” to himself.

Psychology of the victim - causes and consequences

The position of the victim in psychology is considered as a formed skill, the development of which is influenced by several reasons. From childhood, the formation of a victim type may begin due to reduced self-esteem. Such children look different, cannot fight back or have a verbal argument, they are more easily singled out by aggressive children and it is on them that they take out their anger. Indeed, aggressors feel weak and afraid, and if the child is not confident, then he begins to get into trouble, which further reinforces the fear. Those who were constantly made fun of in the family become targets in adulthood, and those who received their mother's love only after breaking their knee on a bicycle understood that if it became emotionally cold, then you need to get into trouble and they will love you.

The lack of one’s own opinion completely destroys a person’s position, and he begins to adapt to the opinion of a significant other. Over time, someone who changes like a chameleon becomes uninteresting, because you can inspire him with anything. So they stop listening to them and taking their protests seriously, they can cheat on such people, then say beautiful words and know that there will be forgiveness. Such treatment is impossible with those who know their own worth and have their own position in relation to any event - you won’t fool them, but the attitude will be respectful, more careful or something, because it’s scary to lose.

Despite the superficial negative consequences, being a victim turns out to be very profitable, because increased attention is paid to them. Through manipulation, the sufferer can achieve much more than through honest and hard work; in addition, inside this creates a certain image of his own holiness. When a person is a martyr, he gradually becomes a great martyr, and the rest become mere mortals, and this significantly increases the decrease in self-esteem characteristic of victims. It’s just that the method is somewhat clumsy and does not work with everyone, but the object of complaints and worries can always be replaced.

Examples

Each of us could observe examples of victimization in everyday life. Here, let's say, is the situation when a girl returning home from a party late at night walks instead of calling a taxi. Consciously or unconsciously, it provokes an attack by intruders, especially if the action takes place in a disadvantaged area.

Another common situation is when a person gets involved in a conflict with a drunken hooligan, rowdy, while he could have walked by.

As already mentioned, when a person finds himself in a victim situation, many illiterate people cause such a speculative reaction as justifying the rapist. This is also common in many traditional societies, including Islamic ones. There, for example, no one stands up for a raped woman, since it is believed that she dressed and behaved too “provocatively” - she was on the street without a burqa, without a man accompanying her, wore open clothes, trousers, etc. In some countries (as in In Saudi Arabia, a raped woman is officially brought before a Sharia court as the culprit because she “provoked the sinful behavior” of her attacker.

In Russian society, of course, such legislation does not exist; however, victim blaming is widespread. This is facilitated by the extremely low level of education and culture of Russians, outdated ideas about “rules of decency,” as well as a criminal gang mentality, a tendency to live “by convention” and extol villains.

Synonyms

We are considering a simple definition, and yet synonyms for the word “victim” will not be superfluous. Analogues always help to understand the meaning better and deeper. The list of replacements is as follows:

• gift;
• victim or victim;
• patient;
• client;
• self-denial;
• sufferer.

As can be seen from the list, there is no full synonym for the word “victim”. You can treat this reality as you like, but the main thing is not to despair. No matter how far the words presented above may be in meaning, they can still be used on occasion.

What types of sacrifices are there?

If we consider the word not so much as a noun, but as a specific action, then with the help of adjectives we can remember many options for what kind of victim there is:

• religious;
• political;
• cultural;
• in vain;
• not in vain;
• expensive.

Sometimes the subject of the action is indicated: father, mother, brother, sister, friend, maybe even a stranger sacrificed something for the sake of another. History knows examples of people saving drowning people and then dying themselves. But these are fairly simple cases. Let's talk further about when a victim is not a victim, but a thoughtful move, and we will also consider the features of a true victim. Since we have a task to explain the meaning of the word “sacrifice,” then why not approach this problem in a creative, non-trivial way.

Trap victim

Again we could use the analogy with chess, but let’s update the figurative series. Let's imagine a football match in which a grandee and a known underdog are playing. A strong team allows a weak team to score a goal without much resistance. Then, when the outsider believed in his own invincibility, and perhaps calmed down and lost his vigilance, the grandee takes his toll and scores three unanswered goals and easily brings the match to the desired result.

The victim-trap strategy is also practiced in human relationships, but has a slightly different form. These are the cases when people present a check for payment for virtue. The tabloid press sometimes brings such stories to light. The mother raised her daughter (or son), and then, when she grew up, carefully summing everything up, she gave the child an invoice. Sadly. If you are ever asked what sacrifice is, you can use “trading in virtue” as a counterexample.

Pseudo-victim

After the main part has been completed, it is worth understanding the intricacies. To truly explain the meaning of a definition, you need to understand that sometimes it does not mean what it seems.

For example, a father and son (or daughter) are playing chess, and the parent, having explained the rules, wins several times against a beginning chess player, he wins again and again, but why “accidentally” loses. Why does he need such a sacrifice (what this is is already clear)? From the point of view of education, there are two irreconcilable positions: some parents believe that the child should not give in, because this humiliates his dignity, and others believe that it is necessary to give in, since otherwise the boy or girl will quickly lose interest in the game. Everyone decides for themselves which side to take in this pedagogical debate, but one thing is clear: if you don’t give in once, then the child can really give up everything. In addition, victory will give him strength and confidence and a desire to move on.