Types of victims and types of personal victimization: general characteristics

What is victimization? General information

What is victimization and victim behavior? Victimization is a person’s predisposition to become a victim of certain circumstances - violent acts, crimes, interpersonal conflicts, etc. Victimology (a science that studies the process of a person becoming a victim of a crime) considers victimization as the main personality quality that influences a person’s “attractiveness” to negative people. influence of the people around him.

It is believed that victims of a particular type of crime have certain qualities that significantly increase the risk of experiencing forced treatment, physical or psycho-emotional abuse.

For example, they may come from the same social strata, be in the same age range, have a similar social circle, behavior, appearance, etc. If all these factors coincide in a certain way, we can say that the person has increased victimization.

This term must also be considered as a socio-psychological phenomenon, in isolation from the criminogenic aspect. Victimism can also manifest itself as a personal quality in relationships with other people. In psychology, victimization is a model of behavior in which a person unconsciously attracts disrespectful attitude from others. Partners with whom he is then in a toxic relationship, by his behavior, without realizing it, “inviting” the offenders to attack.

Victimization, as well as victim behavior, are terms that are mainly used only in Russian victimology. In the West, the very concept that the victim may be indirectly to blame for the fact that the criminal committed violent acts, embedded in these concepts, is sharply condemned.

Such an opinion is regarded as blaming the victim (victim blaming, from the English victim - victim, blame - to blame). For example, a typical manifestation of victim blaming is to say that it is the girl’s own fault that she was raped on the street because she returned late, was dressed provocatively, etc.

It is important to understand that the assessment of a person’s victimization is carried out not in order to justify the criminal, since neither a short skirt nor bright makeup, of course, does not give the rapist the right to commit a crime, but in order to identify the totality of reasons that pushed the aggressor to an unlawful act in relation to another person. Thus, this will help potential victims of violence avoid trouble by eliminating manifestations of their victimization as much as possible.

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.”

Victimization and its classification

This is a fairly broad concept, studied from the perspective of the victim’s behavior, her personal attitudes, and social factors, so that, depending on the chosen classification, several types of victimization can be distinguished in each.

In criminology, the following 3 types of victim behavior are distinguished:

• careless;
• risky;
• dangerous;

In most cases, the criminal does not have a clear motive to commit a crime - he is pushed to do so by the victim’s behavior, which consciously or unconsciously provokes him to commit illegal actions.

The victim may offend the offender, make barbs, and disrespect the personal belongings and property of the potential rapist. If the rapist was the first to show aggression towards the victim, without any visible triggers on her part, he may be frightened or irritated by her reaction - retaliatory aggression towards him. The behavior of the victim is perceived as dangerous, the criminal feels an urgent need to “revenge”, eliminate her, or, on the contrary, expressed helplessness, fear, which pushes the sadistic criminal to commit violent acts.

Victimization is either guilty or innocent.

1. Guilty: The offender commits a crime when provoked by the careless or defiant behavior of the victim. The rapist believes that if a girl on the street is drunk or dressed provocatively, he can take advantage of her. 2. Innocent: the crime is provoked not by the specific behavior of the victim, but by the circumstances, the duties that the victim performed - a thief kills a security guard to get into the warehouse.

They are distinguished, etc. “latent” victimization - victimization that remains outside the records of law enforcement agencies. The victim, for one reason or another, does not want to seek help from the police (he is afraid of possible revenge from the criminal). She does not trust law enforcement agencies, is afraid of accusations against her, and the reasons for committing a crime against her remain unexplored.

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.

What are the causes of victimization?

Along with genetic determination, socio-psychological factors have a huge influence on the formation of victim behavior in the victim.

Unfavorable conditions for social adaptation:

• Alcoholism or drug addiction of parents.
• Having many children.
• Single-parent family (stepfather or stepmother instead of one of the parents, mother or single father).
• Family poverty.
• External or physical defects that lead to rejection by peers.
• Molestation, sexual harassment by relatives or strangers.
• Constant moving, changing schools and teams.
• Involvement in bad companies.
• Drug addiction, substance abuse, alcoholism in a child or teenager.
• Non-reciprocal love, romantic experiences and failures.
• Suicidal intentions.

Psychological factors:

• Emotional coldness on the part of parents.
• High or low self-esteem.
• Loneliness, awareness of one’s difference from everyone else, lack of love, recognition, oppression of a teenager as an individual.
• High degree of neuropsychic instability and anxiety.
• Social shyness, fear of showing your real feelings and emotions, suppression, excessive vulnerability and sensitivity.
• Excessive demands on the child in terms of education, communication with relatives, upbringing in a family with a strict value system that entails moral responsibility for all the individual’s misdeeds.

High victimization of the individual is formed in a family in which the child has a heavy burden of responsibilities, both physical and emotional. The child is afraid not to live up to the hopes placed on him by his parents, who form in him a feeling of guilt if he is not helpful and diligent enough.

Thus, the child is so afraid of disapproval from an adult that he can easily get into a car with a stranger who asks him to show the way, or go up to the criminal’s apartment under the pretext of providing help, and thus find himself in a trap.

Any factors that lower a person’s self-esteem increase his victimization. It’s as if he begins to feel that he “deserves” to be this victim because he did something wrong, out of a feeling of his own inferiority. His criticism decreases, and due to the lack of life and social experience, he cannot yet adequately assess the danger of communicating with a potential maniac or rapist. The inability to refuse and the attempt to gain approval makes him an ideal victim.

The cause of victimization may not only be low self-esteem. Victims with high self-esteem are also often abused. This happens because they take on tasks that they are unable to complete. Such people inadequately assess their abilities, are not critical of themselves enough, and cannot adequately assess the risks that their behavior entails. This type of victim very clearly displays that same victim behavior: they slow down cars, ask for a ride, participate in drinking parties with rapists and often initiate them, and agree to spend the night with them in the same apartment.

A person mistakenly believes that he is able, if necessary, to stand up for himself, and that his behavior, on the contrary, should turn potential criminals away from committing a crime. However, such inadequate self-confidence leads to sad consequences.

According to criminologists, a victim with high self-esteem is more likely to know or be in love with her rapist. Her criticism also decreases, she idealizes the object of her sympathy, does not see how the rapist really treats her, and may behave too openly and provocatively, mistakenly believing that this will not lead to tragedy.

Victimization is a socially deformed personality type. We can distinguish four main victimized sociotypes: conformist, infantile, anomic and marginal.

Conformist type:

1. A person feels his social failure and incompetence and does not have the opportunity to acquire these qualities. He constantly needs protection and patronage from a stronger person, recognizing her superiority over himself.

2. He strongly idealizes this more socially confident person, realizing his dependence on him, since with his help the victim makes up for his indecisiveness and softness.

3. The individual recognizes for himself that he cannot achieve anything without the support of other people, that submission and acceptance of this help is the only way to survive in society. He does not want to take responsibility for his life and destiny.

4. He is afraid of being refused social support, of being left to the mercy of fate, of solving his problems on his own. As a result, a person is constantly in emotionally destructive tension.

Infantile type:

1. A socially immature person who is aware of his inadequacy in the main areas of human social life.

2. All surrounding people are perceived as potential aggressors who want to suppress the infantile, humiliate his dignity, show their lack of involvement in his affairs and problems, criticize the victim for biased reasons.

3. The individual avoids deep interpersonal relationships because he is aware of his immaturity and incompetence in this matter.

4. The biggest fear is that those around him will adopt his attitude towards himself as an unformed person, someone who cannot be taken seriously and considered an equal member of society.

5. Avoids social comparison and evaluation because he is afraid that all his positive traits may be crossed out by the same social immaturity.

6. It is difficult for an individual to show his dissatisfaction, he is not ambitious, he lacks the courage and determination to make some claims to society, to declare himself.

Anomic type:

1. The individual considers himself a completely mature and formed personality, but at the same time he feels a certain social vulnerability associated with non-acceptance by others.

2. People are perceived as tools to achieve their goals at different stages of life's journey.

3. Due to the lack of social and intellectual maturity, he does not have a formed system of values, moral and ethical orientation.

4. Constantly suppresses anger and dissatisfaction with the fact that he has to live according to invented rules and norms in order to remain “one of his own” in society.

5. The victim strives to maintain his social independence, but at the same time it is difficult for him to cope with his problems on his own, and he seeks a social patron (as is the case with the conformist type).

Marginal type:

1. It is difficult for a person to understand his identity, since its features contradict social norms accepted in society. He has no desire to develop and accept a new identity, since the restrictions existing in society prevent him from “opening up” in all the colors of his personal attitudes and discriminate against his “I”.

2. Does not trust other people, fears their interference in his unstable, inverted state of personality.

3. He withdraws into himself, into virtual worlds and illusions. Where, unlike the world of people, one can receive that acceptance of oneself as a socially significant individual.

4. Avoids active communication and interaction with people as there is no need to receive any resources from these processes. Generally accepted forms of social interaction are simply uninteresting for marginalized victims.

What is the benefit for the victim?

Today, many adults find it profitable and convenient to live this way. The victim position always provides a number of advantages: it helps to manipulate other people’s feelings of guilt; helps not to do anything on your own, shifting responsibility to others. In principle, this position is no worse than other roles that we play in life. But it has one specific feature - it gives rise to a feeling of powerlessness, worthlessness, and, as a result, hatred and envy of others.

The victim position in a relationship provides a number of psychological benefits. As a rule, a woman plays this role; she derives certain benefits from this position: she receives the attention of others, sympathy, support, and help. And no one demands anything from her in return. To leave this role means to lose help, support, and pity, and therefore she again and again chooses the position of the victim. A person who is pitied by society is forgiven and allowed a lot. The victim does not need to strive for anything. She is forgiven for her mistakes at work because she has problems at home, and at home they forgive her for missing dinner. She does what she wants, and she has no obligations to anyone. That is, the role of the victim has its own psychological “advantages”. Therefore, it is very difficult to get out of this psychological game.

Victims are great manipulators. It would seem to be a common story - a mother forces her son to do what she needs: “I didn’t sleep at night for you, but you don’t love me! You don’t need me at all!” She is a victim, her goal is to cause a feeling of shame, to appeal to conscience, making her son a tyrant. Surely, everyone can remember similar stories when similar feelings forced them to do for others what was inconvenient and/or unnecessary.

Plus, numerous problems are a great excuse

for all occasions.
As a rule, the speech of people susceptible to victim syndrome is structured according to the model: “I have a bad job because I didn’t get an education, because ...” (insert the desired reason), or “I don’t have time to think about my personal life, since I have ...”, or “I would have achieved everything if not for...”. Shifting responsibility for one's failures
onto others is a characteristic feature of victims and a very convenient position.

Examples of victimization behavior

As mentioned earlier, people with low self-esteem are prone to victimized behavior. Confident that they are wrong and incompetent, they accept the other person’s position as the only correct one and force themselves to follow it. It seems to the victim that her victimization should pity the rapist and stop his intention to commit a crime. As a rule, helplessness and submission provoke the criminal even more.

One of the most striking examples of victim behavior is Stockholm syndrome.

This is the state of the victim, in which at one moment she sensually goes over to the side of her rapist and abuser. He looks for justification for his actions, idealizes his tormentor, tries to understand his motives, sympathizes with him, or even falls in love with him. Sometimes this comes to the point that the victim resists his savior (the person who is trying to get her out of an abusive relationship, or a law enforcement officer in the case of hostage-taking). This is the most classic example of victimization in criminology.

The victimized type of woman often faces domestic violence from her husband or cohabitant, and is subject to accusations of provocative behavior (she was brightly dressed and made up, stayed with her friends, etc.). The victim often, especially from her personality, accepts these accusations and under under constant pressure he admits his “guilt” and the deservedness of this punishment.

The victim’s victimization behavior can be more pronounced: ridicule, threats towards the criminal, an open call to commit a crime (takes “weakly”), infringement of the personal dignity of the criminal, an attempt to show one’s superiority.

Of course, the victim is not always directly or indirectly to blame for being subjected to violence. In this case, they talk about situational victimization. This is a situation in which the victim simply found himself in the wrong time and place, which is why he found himself in a situation dangerous to life and health.

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.

How to get rid of victimization?

Minors are the most victimized group of the population. In adolescence, a person searches for himself, his life priorities, understands his attitude towards others, perceives the attitude of other people towards him.

How to reduce victimization of minors?

You can reduce the level of victimization of a teenager by conducting psychotherapy with him. First, you need to find out what events and factors in childhood led to the formation of increased victimization and make sure that they no longer influence a person’s life.

How to reduce victimization? To reduce your victimization, you need to shift your focus from other people to yourself. The less your own opinion about yourself or about some situation depends on the opinions and assessments of others, the less pronounced your victimization will be.

This is work towards increasing self-esteem (to adequate limits, so as not to go to the other extreme). The lower a person’s self-esteem, the more actively he seeks approval from others, the higher his risk of falling into the “wrong hands.” The level of distrust in people decreases - no matter whether the victim is trustworthy or not, the potential criminal still gets closer to him in an attempt to gain love and approval.

The victim believes that if she silently endures all insults, lives to please other people, adapts to their interests and tolerates disrespectful treatment of herself, then sooner or later she will be rewarded in full. This is a big problem, since in real life, love and respect, on the contrary, are received by more independent, strong individuals. We are all social animals and a weak or dying member of the pack is killed, not dragged along.