Michael Ovey Posted: 30 March 2006
Keywords: Worldviews & Culture,
The rhetoric of victimhood allows us to cast ourselves without qualification as victims, or as saviours of victims, while dramatising our chosen opponents as demonic without qualification. This paper outlines how we sometimes use the role of victim. It analyses the spiritual dangers of manufacturing such blanket identities in relation to usurping God as creator-judge and subverting basic principles of justice, and contrasts victimhood rhetoric with the example of Christ. Instead of victimhood rhetoric, we should prefer roles following the example of Jesus, who sees humans in relation to the perfect justice and mercy of God.
Congratulations and many thanks to Michael on his astute and very helpful analysis.
The Drama Triangle is much used in training counsellors in the therapeutic/counselling world, and we are often warned about the 'messianic' syndrome of the Rescuer, especially as the desire to help others is a large part of our motivation to enter that world in the first place.
It seems that internalising one's victimhood is as perilous as any act of persecution, and that in some contexts we would do well to substitute the word perpetrator for Persecutor?
My own use of the Drama Triangle schema in the counselling chamber writes God in the middle, as well as outside.
I'm also intrigued by the fact that it is tripartite...as are some models of Restorative Justice.
David Cooke 11 February 2011