The process of scapegoating within families, groups and society at large
“The process of engendering and making possible human community through arbitrary victimization, is called ‘scapegoating mechanism’…” Rene Girard
Today’s piece is in some sense a continuation of the previous post, especially of the thread concerning dynamics and imprisoning roles of both family and broader systems. In particular I’ll be focusing on the process of scapegoating within families, larger groups and society at large, and I’ll be drawing from diverse material that I’ve been currently looking at in an attempt to approach the topic from different angles. I will also include some artwork I made in October related to the topics discussed.
Part A
We can’t really understand family systems or small groups without situating them in their broader cultural and sociopolitical contexts. In Michael P. Nichols’text book, Family Therapy: Concepts and Methods, there is an intoroductory graph that lists the development of Family Therapy over decades, and alongside each new theory, important figure or development in the field, there’s reference to major political events that occurred that year, for instance, in 1945 WWWII ends, in 1953 Stalin dies, in 1954 school segregation in the USA is ruled unconstitutional, in 1966 Indira Gandhi becomes prime minister of India, in 1970 students protest against the Vietnam War, in 1989 the Berlin Wall comes down; in 2001the September terrorist attack occurs, in 2003 the USA invade Iraq, in 2009 there is the worldwide economic recession, and so on. Nichols writes: “the view of persons as separate entities, with families acting on them is consistent with the way we experience ourselves…, but it’s hard to see that we are embedded in a network of relationships …”
Also, in discussing role theory, and the various roles and dynamics in families, Nichols notes that we should avoid describing others in terms of single or rigid roles because people are complex, they take on more roles than one, and also, family roles are often complementary and they don’t exist independently of each other. For instance, if there is a domineering person in a system, there will be a submissive one. More functional families, according to Jon Spiegel and his colleagues’s findings, contained relatively few and stable roles (cited in Nichols); however, in more antagonistic or traumatised families less healthy roles are enforced on children and other members. Some terms used to describe these roles are the ‘identified patient’ or ‘parentified child’ or the black sheep or the scapegoat, and the golden child, the healthier or stronger parentified child, may become what is sometimes called the glass child, and the child demanding more attention for a variety of reasons, not necessarily health conditions, the rescuer, the mascot, the one that keeps the peace, the lost child, and so on.
It is important to bear in mind that there will be individual differences, and the terms above are not used as labels, but rather to facilitate our understanding of and capacity to discuss these processes. Moreover, we are all more than our roles or traumas, and with awareness and substantial support, people can step out of these roles in adulthood. Another useful thing to remember is that change in one person or relinquishing of a certain role or way of being in a group changes the whole system in bigger or smaller ways, and more rigid families or groups are more resistant to change and resort more to homeostatic mechanisms. For instance, antagonistic or conflictual relational processes within a family system, may often activate symptom related triangles in order to reestablish stability. Family members and outsiders are often included in this triangulation process in order to maintain homeostasis at any cost. Triangles are not necessarily negative; it is only symptom related triangles that cause harm in families and other systems, and therefore, change often necessitates the awareness of and neutralization of these coalitions.
The most parentified, neglected and less favored child often ends up being scapegoated, carrying the weight of others’ emotional and other unresolved conflicts or intergenerational traumas.The scapegoat can serve as a container, a diversion, keeping the family or other group system from addressing difficult issues within the system. In some sense they become the family system’s soothing mechanism. Often the more compassionate members of a system, the truth tellers or ones that see that things could be otherwise, the less demanding or less confrontational and likely to defend themselves, the artists or the more critical thinkers are the more likely to be forced to take on this type of role. Common enemy scapegoats provide a way for small groups like family systems, friend groups, co-workers or much larger groups to manage internal conflicts, aggression, envy, fear and anxiety by projecting blame onto or dehumanizing a member or another group. Another point that is often not discussed adequately is the issue of resources, gains and losses. The scapegoated member of a family, for instance, will be provided with less support and resources, the distribution of resources and attention will be unequal. In larger social groups scapegoated people will be treated unfairly, deprived of resources, undermined, and many will suffer losses of things they have achieved, built, or worked hard for. Aggression against scapegoated people can often involve the undermining of all areas of their life.
Rebecca C. Mandeville’s guide book, Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role, concentrates on scapegoated, parentified children. Mandeville notes that the guide is informed by her experience as a Marriage and Family Therapist, counselor and coach of adult survivors of family scapegoating, her qualitative research, and her own experiences of being in this role herself. The basic topics of the book are: How to recognize and identify family scapegoating abuse (FSA: a term coined by her) signs and symptoms; the reasons scapegoated individuals have difficulty recognizing they are being abused / scapegoated; the ways complex trauma (C-PTSD) and betrayal trauma can impede recovery, and how intergenerational trauma and false narratives contribute to scapegoating dynamics; the reasons why the more empathic or truth telling child or family member is more likely to end up scapegoated, and how to reduce fawning behaviors*, recover and realign with one’s truer self. The ‘fawn’ response is an instinctual response associated with a need to avoid conflict and trauma via appeasing behaviors, and was coined by Pete Walker.
Mandeville claims that being the parentified and scapegoated child is usually symptomatic of generations of systemic dysfunction, fueled by unrecognized anxiety and / or trauma. It’s as if, she writes, the nuclear and extended family members are participating in a consensual ‘survival trance’ supported by false narratives, anxiety, and egoic defense mechanisms, such as denial and projection. She adds that for those who do realize that there is another reality outside the one they were inoculated into since infancy, it can be a shock, and the truth can act as a destabilizing force in families that depend on false narratives, control and denial to maintain their equilibrium. She also notes that her more recent research confirms that scapegoating can also begin in adulthood, often initiated by a partner, spouse or other person.
Madeville writes that in Murray Bowen’s family systems theory, families are viewed as emotionally interrelated systems, and scapegoating in a family system is viewed as being a manifestation of unconscious processes whereby the family displaces their collective psychological difficulties, unacknowledged traumas, anger, envy and complexes onto a specific family member. In this way, she says, “the scapegoated child is subjected to rejecting, shaming, and blaming behaviors via what is known as a Family Projection Process.” Scapegoating she notes is a process of dehumanization and is closely related to bullying, and both qualify as overt or covert forms of psycho-emotional abuse. The scapegoated child she says “can be subjected to aggressive domination and intimidation tactics, replete with threats, use of force, or coercion, with no means of escape…… is repeatedly cast into a negative light and portrayed in a one-dimensional manner that denies them their full humanity, with all of the attendant negative and harmful consequences.”
Part of these dynamics might be pitting one sibling against the other to create a camp of ‘allies’ and portaying the targeted child as defective, deserving of the family’s hostility or rejection, and unworthy of love and inclusion. The child that mirrors the parent in gratifying ways or the child that demands more attention may inhabit the role of the ‘golden child.’ This damaging scapegoat narrative, she writes, is distorted and designed to elevate the parent and demean the child, and “is shared within and outside of the family, resulting in siblings, extended family, and friends of the family viewing the scapegoated child through this same distorted, negative lens.” However, she notes many of these people “are invariably intelligent, well educated, and positively contributing to society. Many are quite successful in their personal and professional endeavors and are highly regarded within their communities…..”
She discusses the devastating consequences of being scapegoated, one being complex post-traumatic stress symptomatology and betrayl trauma, devastating ‘smear’ campaigns, defamation of character or damage of reputation, difficulties finding competent professionals (doctors, therapists, counselors, lawyers, etc). There are also challenges related to dis-identifying from the scapegoat narrative and attendant distorted stories, identifying their own wants and needs, expressing themselves authentically and forming secure attachments. Also, as they grow older if they openly reject the family narrative or role they will likely experience increased relational distress, pushback and trauma as a direct consequence of challenging the family projection process and homeostasis (balance) that requires them to remain in the ‘scapegoat’ role.
She focuses on Complex PTSD, which is sometimes interchanged with terms, such as, complex relational trauma, developmental trauma, and interpersonal trauma, as well as, betrayal trauma and Betrayal Trauma Theory (BTT), which was first introduced by Dr. Jennifer J. Freyd in 1994. Betrayal trauma develops in response to relational trauma and is defined as a trauma perpetrated by someone with whom the victim is close to and reliant upon for support and survival. Mandeville writes that “BTT addresses situations in which people or institutions that a person relies upon for protection, resources, and survival violate the trust or well-being of that person (Freyd, 2008).” BTT, she writes, asserts that “betrayal acts as the precursor to dissociation, meaning, the dissociation occurs as a means of preserving the relationship with the primary caregiver or other important family figures the child feels dependent upon for their survival. Because a child must rely on their caregiver for support and safety, they are more likely to dissociate (‘split off’) traumatic experiences from conscious awareness when experiencing betrayals of trust.” Mandeville also talks about disenfranchised grief, a term coined by grief researcher Kenneth J. Doka, which is grief experienced when someone suffers a loss that is not (or cannot) be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned, or publicly mourned. She states that this disenfranchised grief may be connected to lost family connections: lost community and social connections: and sometimes the need to relocate so as not to be forever stigmatized in a community due to ‘smear campaigns.’
She reflects on causality and says there are no reasons and many reasons why a person may inherit or be assigned dehumanizing, imprisoning, one-dimensional roles. She explores the unconscious effects of intergenerational trauma and explains that the scapegoating of a child or adult is “often (but not always) the result of an unconscious family projection process that supports maladaptive emotional and behavioral coping patterns that are ‘transmitted’ between generations. Mandeville claims that a high percentage of scapegoated people are empaths, and whether the empath has these abilities due to ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ is still up for debate, more likely a combination of both (I have written about this elsewhere). Scapegoated people also tend to seek, see or tell the truth. They are often the ‘truth tellers’ within a family system, group or community, are more likely to speak out when they see or experience injustices or abuse, are also more sensitive to others’ pain, and may often aspire to other ways of being or want to bring about change.As a result they may be seen as a threat, and therefore, must be de-powered, so as to maintain the family or group narrative intact and those taking part in the scpegoating process blameless.
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Across time we can detect many instances of scapegoating, history is littered with bloody instances of ethnic or religious groups scapegoating other groups. When reality is too complex and problems are difficult to solve, and when there is competition for resources, intergroup hostility increases and projection can provide a temporary outlet. When a nation feels uncertain and when there are serious socioecomomic and political issues, it invents or remembers enemies to put the blame on because fear provides a means to unite, and then pluralism and diversity, justice and democracy suffer. When groups or societies face strain leaders resort to scapegoating, promising false relief through a common enemy and hostility. Groups also tend to favour their own group (in-group), while viewing outsiders (out-group) with suspicion or hostility, and this can lead to the out-group being scapegoated. Scapegoating also allows a group or individual to maintain a positive sense of self without acknowledging their traumas, aggression and envy, weaknesses, mistakes or bad qualities. It provides an object to displace frustration and aggression, while also strengthening group unity and bonding.
The process of scapegoating often takes problems and facts, distorts and exaggerates beyond recognition and then projects and blames. Medieval crusaders described their wars as defences of Christendom against ‘barbarians,’ colonial empires similarly justified domination, and in the 20th century fascist regimes scapegoated other groups to unite societies. Suffering the consequences of WWI the German Nazis were able through the process of scapegoating, by conjuring envy and hatred toward Jews, to rally Germans to extreme levels of nationalism, unifying them to a singular cause. However, the scapegoat theme is also ever-present in literature; the ancient Greek myths of Oedipus, whose banishment from Thebes ended a plague and restored order and peace, and Iphigenia’s sacrifice by her father, who had angered Artemis, allowed for fair winds (compare with the divinely ordained sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter); George Orwell’s book; Animal Farm, where one group is scapegoated to maintain control, and his dystopian novel 1984, which depicts an authoritarian surveillance state, where the party needs to constantly create an enemy to present to the masses; William Golding’s Lord of the Flies; John Flanagan children’s book The Whipping Boy; John Steinbeck, Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus, Doris Lessing, Daphne du Maurier, and so many others, have all used the scapegoat theme.
** A whipping boy was a boy educated alongside a boy prince or monarch, who received corporal punishment for the prince’s transgressions in his presence. The prince was not punished himself because his royal status exceeded that of his tutor, but experiencing the punishment of his friend would supposedly instill fear and motivate him to not repeat his behaviour.
It is suggested that scapegoating, which is as old as humanity, has not changed much with the passing of time, although it has evolved. We can observe a similarity of belief and practice across eras, societies, cultures and religions. Sometimes the role of the scapegoat is forcibly appointed by others, and at other times, a process of self scapegoating takes place in order to attain personal or collective transcendence. Actually to understand scapegoating we need to also explore religious stories, myths, practices, superstitions, fears and deeper group dynamics and motivations that necessitate finding another to bear the brunt of a group’s / society’s anger, fear, frustrations and guilt, in order to bring a sense of relief at a collective level. I will briefly mention a few examples I came across in the material I’ve looked at while writing this piece. The scapegoat construct in religious stories and practices basically involves burdening a person or animal with all the sins and dysfunctions of a community and then sacrificing or ostracizing it to bring psychological release, to atone for the group or to restore order, end plagues and droughts. Also, the concept predates contemporary religions and societies and we could probably detect it in all societies and religions all the way back to antiquity and even further back to more primitive societies.
Leviticus 16 recounts the ritual sacrifice that Yahweh (God in Hebrew) commands the Israelites people to perform to atone for the sins of Aron’s son and their own collective sins. A goat is slayed and another goat is released into the wilderness once the people have projected their sins and unwanted aspects of their self onto it, in other words imbued it with the unwanted bad aspects of themselves. Mandeville writes that “the term scapegoat originated from a story in the Old Testament (Leviticus 16: 1-34). In this ancient tale that is associated with the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement, Aaron had to choose a goat to take on the sins of the tribe, i.e., the collective). This goat was then cast out into the desert. A weak, domesticated goat would have likely died a short time after being left to fend for itself. Therefore, the goat Aaron selected had to be very strong and robust so it could fulfill its purpose of relieving the tribe of its sins.” She adds that even though survivors of scpegoating may feel vulnerable, raw, and worn out as a result of being harassed and deprived of protection of their tribe, it is important to know that “the scapegoat in this story was the most robust, strongest goat in the herd. That is why it was chosen.”
Jesus was appointed the role of the carrier of the sins of the whole world, and could be considered the scapegoat construct of Christianity or the most significant archetypal scapegoat. The scapegoat construct doesn’t only play an important role in Christianity, but probably in most religions to one degree or another. The Japanese Handaka Matsuri, roughly translated as Naked Man Festival is a violent re-enactment of a ritual human sacrifice enshrined in Japanese mythological history. A village suffering a plague, arrested a random man passing through the village, stripped him of his clothes and dragged him to a shrine to be offered as a scapegoat. He was slain for the collective interests of the village. This ceremony is still mimicked as an annual purification method throughout Japan today. It has also been argued that in Buddhism the individual or narrative self, the ego and our desires, could be viewed as a personal scapegoat, which we need to transcend through asceticism or other means, and which is sacrificed to achieve enlightment or the ending of suffering. In Buddhism Siddhartha Gautama has been considered a (self) scapegoat figure. Also, his horse Kanthaka becomes a kind of whipping boy, so that the prince may be spared the punishment, and also a container for his fathers’ distress. There is also an old Japanese Buddhist practice of self-mummification a slow suicidal process one could say, where monks observed asceticism to the point of inducing their own death through starvation, and thus, entering mummification while alive. In Hinduism, Brahmins historically served as ritual scapegoats, absorbing the badness for their patrons, and so on.
Arthur Colman (see below) claims that the creation of a scapegoat requires a process akin to the psychological mechanisms of projection and projective identification in that it uses an other to contain the darker side or unwanted aspects of oneself or group life, and that a scapegoat could be considered as humanity’s societal vessel for the shadow, a vessel which is, by definition innocent of the burden it assumes. The community practically deceives itself into believing that the victim is the culprit of their problems or communal crisis, and that the persecution or elimination of the victim will restore order or peace. The Christian theologian René Girard, tells us that the Bible reveals, for the first time, that in reality the victim is innocent and unjustly scapegoated. This truth along with the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ inherent in religion had remained concealed up to then. So, within Judaism and later Christianity the concept of victim appears for the very first time in cultural history, an ethical concern that has shaped the Western world since. To the question of whether this knowledge has put an end to the sacrificial order based on violence in the society, Girard answers ‘No’.because in order for a truth to have an impact it must find receptive listeners, and also, people do not change quickly.
Finally, there are different conceptions of the scapegoat (process) within different fields of study, which might be useful to present here very briefly so as to facilitate understanding of this individual and group process. In her PhD thesis (Department of Philosophy McGill University, Montréal, July 2022) Celia Edell outlines the theological, anthropological, and psychoanalytic conceptions of scapegoating. She proposes that in all conceptions, a scapegoat functions as the focal point for blame. Theological conceptions of the scapegoat have tended to split into three directions and the scapegoat is understood a) as expiating guilt though the suffering of an innocent vessel, b) as the cause of all evil that must be expelled from society, c) as ritual exile itself. In anthropological accounts, the mechanism of scapegoating is described as a part of human nature’s drive to resolve communal tension through the purging of a victim, sometimes thought to be the cause of the tension, and at other times chosen at random. In the psychoanalytic tradition, scapegoating has come to mean the protection of one’s own ego by psychological projection of negative qualities onto others. This can occur on the levels of individual psyche and group psychology.
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Another book I’ve been reading in preparation for this post is Up From Scapegoating: Awakening Consciousness in Groups by Arthur Colman, a psychiatrist, clinical professor, depth analyst trained at the C.G. Jung Institute in San Francisco, consultant to groups and leaders, and writer. Colman explains that scapegoating is an ancient activity, “so ancient that there are few primitive societies where evidence of the practice has not been found,” and can be detected anytime there is a transfer of negative attribution from one part of the system to another, or from one part of the system to an object outside the system, in order to fulfill what is perceived to be a unifying survival function for the system as a whole. In chapter one he writes that “unity is the important concept in all scapegoating activity, the scapegoat represents the group’s push towards its own wholeness by excluding its disposable elements,” and includes a quote that defines scapegoating in a chilling way from British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who in January 1970 said: “a million Ibos tribesman have to die to preserve the unity of Nigeria….” (Jacob, 1987, cited in Colman, 1995, p.216)
Colman discusses how groups struggle to accommodate diversity and will defend themselves against the different or the new or what they might perceive as negative by collectively rejecting this element through the creation of an individual or group scapegoat, and explores ways individuals and groups can grow beyond the old and long standing practice of scapegoating. Colman connects depth psychology with its focus on the individual and individual development to group theory and group development. He takes some of Jung’s basic ideas, mostly Margaret Mahler’s theory of child development, the concept of individuation, unconscious defensive processes, group theory and other concepts, and discusses their relevance to the problems of groups, institutions, and political systems, in times of nuclear and other environmental threats, where every individual’s survival is dependent on the consciousness and decisions of larger groups. He devotes a chapter to how early developmental theories can help us understand the development of group consciousness. He writes: “In the past thirty years, child psychologists interested in studying the development of consciousness have attempted to integrate psychoanalytic theory based on adult speculations about very early states of consciousness…. with field observations of actual infant and child behavior.”
He highlights the significance of language, story and myth, and explains that the way groups learn and grow is mirrored in the myths they embody. He analyzes three central group myths, the scapegoat, the island, and the Round Table, which he notes, “taken together, describe a widespread developmental sequence of group and societal maturation.” The first myth is that of the scapegoat, which is the most pervasive myth of group life, and underlies “the shaky stability of human collective life.” It is, he writes, the myth that helps us justify war through the concept of the enemy, and social inequality through the concept of the underling and the structures of social class. It’s a powerful force in most of our religious, educational, work, and family systems as well. He writes: “Christianity is based on the scapegoat/messiah myth; Islam uses the infidel and the Jihad as two of its sustaining pillars; and Judaism has the chosen people as its central concept. In modern life, scapegoating is the root of major social issues on the campus and in the workplace—sexism and racism. It is part of a basic family pattern which creates abused and victimized children.”
Colman adds that these patterns with which many people now take issue are not new; they are simply recent manifestations of a scapegoating process that goes back to human sacrifice. The basis of the scapegoat myth is this: “the group is not to blame for its problems, its bad feelings, its pain, its defeats, instead these are the responsibility of a particular individual or subgroup—the scapegoat—who is perceived as being fundamentally different from the rest of the group and must be excluded or sacrificed in order for the group to survive and remain whole.” He presents the psychological connections between the roles of the scapegoat in the group and the shadow in the individual, and suggests that just as the individual uses unconscious mechanisms to detoxify and reject unwanted elements from consciousness, so the group uses scapegoating to detoxify and reject negative elements from its consciousness; however, in both cases there’s little growth and development if one’s shadow or the group’s scapegoats are not confronted. He believes that working through and past the scapegoating mechanism is a necessary prelude to achieving a level of group development in which diversity and collective responsibility are encouraged, and it’s only when the group “no longer focuses on saviors, heroes, victims, and enemies but on the contribution of each group member to the collective and the collective to each member, it enters a new level of development.”
The second myth is that of the island. This is beyond the scapegoat phase and the concept here is that the isolated island is capable of controlling its own destiny without outside help. Its strength depends on group cohesion and homogeneity, which also carries with it a potential for return to the mechanisms of scapegoat mentality, and for paranoia when threatened, and for the outside world, previously either neutral or ignored, becoming the enemy. Colman says the island myth is pervasive in the well-ordered middle class of the Western world and underlies the assumption of self-sufficiency of nations like Switzerland, the small towns in mid-western America, and the walled communities of well-to-do urban and suburban enclaves across the world, and also informs the many corporations and organizations that value independence over interdependence. He adds that in such collectives, disability, illness, and even antisocial behavior are tolerated, as long as, they can be viewed as “insider” problems, while those with the same problem that are viewed as “outsiders,” such as mentally ill homeless people, are treated as subhumans.
The island myth, he says, also underlies many authoritarian political structures and different kinds of cults; it is the ethos for fundamentalist communities and nations. It is blind to the crucial contribution of hidden elements such as untouchables and slaves, and is at risk due to its isolation from changing technology and cultural diversity, and from new ideas and resources. Colman refers to the political events of the early 1990s in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that have demonstrated that island communities either regress into repetitive scapegoating to rid themselves of the differences they cannot encompass or are forced to open their boundaries to the outside world and undergo the inevitable and painful transformations to new forms of group development.
However, he concludes, new forms of group development are still sadly lacking and that there have been few human social and political systems that have endured without relying on scapegoating or isolation as major bulwarks to survival, and even large unthreatened groups with almost unlimited resources that have had more chance to develop collectives which contain diversity, like the USA, have relied on both isolation and scapegoating as stabilizing forces at various times and places throughout their histories. The democracies of the twentieth century have also been supported by powerful scapegoating in the forms of racism and sexism. Humanity, he writes, “is still in evolutionary infancy; our ability to kill our own kind even when our survival is not clearly threatened is a glaring example of the aggressive, primitive level of human group development.”
The third myth is the Round Table, which in the Arthurian legends is “in the likeness of the world.” Colman finds this myth more compelling for its combination of authorized leadership, political equality, and a deeply felt group responsibility and connectedness, as well as its commitment to serve not only Table members but the collective as a whole, a commitment that serves both individual and collective. These legends, he writes, are a myth of male group utopia, in which a brotherhood of equals collaborate in the pursuit of truth and social justice, and the Round Table symbolizes the induction of a new societal Self, a new world order, brought about by emphasizing the conjunction of difference—youth and age, various nationalities and talents. The Round Table, writes, Colman, is a mirror of the society from which it has emerged and is not free from prejudice, including sexism and classism, and the foibles of humanity are not overcome in Camelot, but the vision is nonetheless a profound one, a commitment to the task of serving both individual and collective.
Today groups in which the scapegoating or isolating consciousness does not play a central role are rare. Colman poses the question whether the underlying archetype of a society or a whole culture can change, and refers to Jung, who proposed that one or another archetype could become dominant in a society and affect its cultural myths and social structure, and to the nineteenth-century historian Jacob Burkhardt, who demonstrated this principle in his classic study of Renaissance Italy by defining a significant change in societal consciousness as the key to understanding the evolution between the medieval and Renaissance periods of Western history. To survive as a species, Colman writes, the myths we embrace cannot rest on the old ways of scapegoating and isolation, and myths of interdependence, such as Arthur’s Round Table, “carry more hope in a world on which boundaries of air, water, earth, and fire are increasingly more relevant than maps of nations or even the classification of species.”
There are a few more things I’d like to include in this discussion, and therefore, this lengthy piece will be followed by a shorter PART 2.