VICTIM

Today, from the earliest hours of the morning when I met with my regular exercise buddies, the subject that dominated our discussions was “the victim.” Either in our discussion with regard to our present national tragedy, or while talking about our personal lives this morning, “the victim” seemed to inform all of our conversations.

Then, as if fate decided to punctuate our morning with a living example, another friend joined us in full blown identification with his own victim(ness). There seemed to be no way to communicate with him without offending him, each and every gesture, word, explanation, or attempt to reconcile seemed to only produce more offense. There seemed to be no way of satisfying some invisible wound that oozed constant and bitter pain and resentment.

When asked what the problem was, only silence, mean looks, and more expressions of affront. No invitation to resolve the matter could resolve it. We parted ways with the mutual understanding that an invitation was “on the table” to resolve whatever the perceived “problem” was.

This led me home to consider the morning’s events and do my soul searching, reading and this writing on the matter.

My experience of our encounter was one of feeling helpless while with someone whose hurts, perceptions and actions threatened to turn “me” into their victim. I chose to avoid this by requesting a resolution to our problem, at any time of his choosing.

Below, and linked here are the insightful writings about "the victim" by Lyn Cowan in her book “Tracking the White Rabbit: A Subversive View of Modern Culture. Her words have assisted my reflection on this morning's events. Perhaps others might benefit as well.

Sincerely,
José Angel Santana

“. . . No one is only one-dimensional; no one is only a victim.

A careful therapy of an adult who was wounded as a child requires not just regression to recall and relive the wound; it also requires progression through remembrance of what that child has, and might have otherwise, become. This is a remembrance not of all that was true or false, but of all the maybes, the thousand maybes and might-have-beens. As long as that early painful experience remains the central and defining experience of one's life, no real creativity is possible; life is lived in reruns - no new ideas, no new characters, no new plots, no new possibilities.

This is not blaming the victim. It is rather de-victimizing the person who has suffered painful blows in childhood; it is a refusal to tag the person with an eternal label of “victim, ” a label of choice for too many therapy clients. This label has been handed out by psychologists, journalists, and lawyers, who keep referring to such persons as victims - not as adults, not as individuals who have experienced anything else, not as persons, but as victims. The Muses assist us to disidentify with the victim archetype by calling us to reshape the context and import of those experiences of childhood which wounded us, so that we may honor the wound without having to suffer it daily, centrally, eternally.

You cannot look at Michelangelo's sculptures or read Maya Angelou's writings and know for certain whether they were abused as children. What matters is what they have made, the enduring images in stone and words they have given the world. Their works are full of suffering and power and so they speak to everyone, regardless of personal history or individual circumstance. But we know that Michelangelo suffered all his life from the mean-spirited and self-serving manipulation of his father, and we know that Maya Angelou had endured enough shattering pain by the time she was ten to fill a lifetime. But Maya Angelou is not a victim: she was our national Poet Laureate. And Michelangelo became immortal when he first struck chisel to stone.” (64)

Click to read: Chapter 7 - The archetype of the victim

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"The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another." -- Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut