“Black sheep-1” by Jesus Solana from Madrid, Spain is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The psychological processes of Scapegoating
The interplay between behaviourism and the psychological mechanisms of avoiding personal truths and projecting blame as part of the phenomena we know as scapegoating, is multidimensional, changing from target to target, based on specific triggers and biases, originating from differing attachment needs. Here’s a breakdown of some relevant theoretical models and concepts:
Behaviourism
Operant Conditioning: This model, proposed by B.F. Skinner, suggests that behaviours are shaped by their consequences. If individuals are rewarded for blaming others (e.g., gaining social approval or avoiding punishment), they may continue this behaviour as a learned response.
Classical Conditioning: This involves associating certain stimuli with emotional responses. If someone has been conditioned to feel shame or fear when confronting their own truths, they may develop a reflexive tendency to project blame onto others to avoid those uncomfortable feelings.
cognitive dissonance Theory
Proposed by Leon Festinger, this theory posits that individuals experience discomfort (dissonance) when their beliefs and behaviours are inconsistent. To alleviate this discomfort, they may rationalize their actions or project blame onto others, thus avoiding the need to confront their own truths.
Defence Mechanisms
Projection: This is a psychological defence mechanism where individuals attribute their own unacceptable feelings or thoughts to others. For example, someone who feels inadequate may accuse others of being incompetent, thus deflecting attention from their own insecurities.
Denial: This involves refusing to accept reality or facts, which can lead to blaming others for one’s own failures or shortcomings. It’s a way to protect oneself from the emotional pain of acknowledging personal truths.
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura’s theory emphasizes the role of observational learning and modelling. If individuals observe others successfully avoiding accountability by blaming others, they may adopt similar behaviours, reinforcing a cycle of blame and avoidance.
Truth-Default Theory (TDT)
This communication theory suggests that people generally assume others are telling the truth. When someone projects blame, it may be a way to manipulate this default assumption, diverting attention from their own failings.
Pragmatic Theories of Truth
These theories focus on the practical aspects of truth and how it is constructed through social interactions. In a society where misinformation is prevalent, individuals may project blame as a way to navigate complex social dynamics and maintain their self-image.
Attachment Theory
The need to avoid admitting personal truths and the tendency to project blame onto others can be understood through a combination of these theories. They highlight how behaviour is influenced by environmental factors, cognitive processes, and social dynamics.
Attachment theory provides a profound lens through which we can understand the roots of our emotional and psychological challenges, including issues of self-confidence and self-esteem. Let’s break this down step by step:
Understanding Attachment Theory
Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby and later expanded by Mary Ainsworth, emphasizes the importance of early relationships, particularly between a child and their primary caregiver. Here are some key points:
Emotional Bonds: The theory posits that the emotional bonds formed in early childhood significantly influence our relationships and emotional health throughout life.
Attachment Styles: There are four primary attachment styles—secure, anxious, avoidant, and disorganized. Each style reflects how individuals relate to others and themselves based on their early experiences.
Lack of Wholeness and Self-Rejection
When individuals experience inconsistent or negative caregiving, it can lead to a lack of wholeness. This manifests in several ways:
Enforced Rejection of Self: If a child feels unloved or unworthy due to their caregiver’s behaviour, they may learn to reject parts of themselves to gain approval. This rejection can lead to feelings of inadequacy and a fragmented sense of self.
Impact on Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem: The internalized belief that they are not good enough can severely impact self-confidence and self-esteem. Individuals may struggle to recognize their worth and capabilities.
Seeking a “Saviour”
As a result of these experiences, individuals may increasingly seek external validation or a “saviour” to fill the void left by their lack of self-acceptance. Here’s how this plays out:
Dependency on Others: The need for a saviour often stems from a desire for someone to affirm their worth and provide the love and acceptance they missed in childhood. This can lead to unhealthy dependency in relationships, and also on society itself. The drug addict, having their addiction officially support, through substitute, socially acceptable, proscribed medication.
Cycle of Seeking Validation: Individuals may find themselves in a cycle of seeking out relationships or situations where they hope to receive the validation they lack, often leading to disappointment and further feelings of inadequacy.
The Development of Attachment Styles
The development of differing attachment styles is deeply rooted in the interactions between a child and their primary caregiver. These early experiences shape how individuals relate to others throughout their lives. Let’s break down how these attachment styles are formed based on caregiver interactions:
Secure Attachment
Caregiver Interaction: A caregiver who is consistently responsive, nurturing, and emotionally available fosters a sense of safety and trust in the child.
Resulting Style: Children with secure attachment feel confident exploring their environment, knowing they can return to their caregiver for comfort. They tend to develop healthy relationships in adulthood, characterized by trust and effective communication.
Anxious Attachment (Ambivalent)
Caregiver Interaction: This style often arises from inconsistent caregiving, where the caregiver is sometimes responsive and other times neglectful or intrusive.
Resulting Style: Children may become overly dependent on their caregivers for reassurance, leading to anxiety about abandonment. In adulthood, they may exhibit clinginess or fear of rejection in relationships, often seeking constant validation.
Impact on the adult: In adult life, people who are anxious, tend to need constant confirmation of support, and if they do not get it, that demand will increase. Exactly how this manifests is in itself, multidimensional. Some can fall into abusive narcissistic relationships, convincing themselves that the constant attention and control is a sign that they are loved and cred for. Others, who have perhaps learnt from those negative relationships, may feel driven to people-please in other walks of life. Some may become wounded healers, some feel they are imposters, not only in work or society, but also as a person.
Nervous attachment can also lead to a need to constantly gain gratification, such as through eating, drinking, gaming, gambling, or other form of indulgence, whose negative impact is more subtle, and longer term.
Avoidant Attachment
Caregiver Interaction: Caregivers who are emotionally unavailable or dismissive can lead to avoidant attachment. These caregivers may discourage emotional expression or prioritize independence over connection.
Resulting Style: Children learn to suppress their emotional needs and may appear self-sufficient. As adults, they might struggle with intimacy and often keep others at a distance, valuing independence over closeness.
Impact on the adult: The adult will often struggle to form close relationships, and is also likely to be used to being a scapegoat, a role they have, at least, in part, accepted, and are often blaming themselves. This leads to a general mindset of a depressed failure, often wearing a mask of the opposite, a happy, successful person. However, every time that they are forced to smile, they are reminded that this is only the mask.
Disorganized Attachment
Caregiver Interaction: This style can develop when caregivers are a source of both comfort and fear, such as in cases of abuse or neglect. The caregiver may be unpredictable, leading to confusion in the child.
Resulting Style: Children with disorganized attachment may exhibit erratic behaviours and struggle with Emotional regulation. In adulthood, they may have difficulty forming stable relationships and may experience high levels of anxiety and fear in close connections.
Impact on the adult:Â This can often be thought of as a “bipolar” attachment style. The individual both needs an attachment, and deeply fears the vulnerability of getting too close. This can result in an oscillation from “need you”, until that need has almost been satisfied, and is replaced with another need, for total privacy, for space, for no commitments.
How do these attachment styles develop over time?
Here’s how we can unpack this seemingly illogical attachment behaviour:
Early Attachment System:
Survival Instinct: Our brains are wired for attachment. It’s a fundamental survival instinct that ensures our safety and well-being, especially during childhood. This system is designed to seek out and maintain close bonds with caregivers.
“Secure Base” Need: The ideal scenario is a secure attachment where the caregiver provides a “secure base” – a safe haven from which the child can explore the world, knowing they can return for comfort and support.
Maladaptive Strategies:
Inconsistent Caregiving: When a caregiver is inconsistent or unavailable, the attachment system gets thrown off balance. The child learns that their primary source of security is unreliable.
Compensatory Strategies: To compensate for this insecurity, the child develops maladaptive strategies, such as clinging, seeking constant reassurance, or becoming overly dependent. These strategies are attempts to re-establish a sense of safety and connection.
The Search for “Trustworthiness”:
Unfulfilled Need: The yearning for a secure connection remains deeply ingrained. Even after experiencing betrayal or disappointment, the need for a “secure base” doesn’t disappear.
“Trustworthy” Illusion: The “needy” attacher may believe that finding a different, more “trustworthy” person will finally fulfil their need for security. This belief stems from a deep-seated hope that they can find the missing piece of their emotional puzzle in another person.
The Cycle of Disappointment:
Idealization and Projection: They often idealize potential partners, projecting their unmet needs onto them, hoping they will provide the unconditional love and acceptance they crave.
Repetition of Patterns: This idealization often leads to disappointment when relationships inevitably fall short of their expectations. The cycle of seeking a “saviour” continues, perpetuating the belief that their happiness depends on external sources.
Behavioural programming: If the individual repeats this incongruent attachment behaviour enough times, it will become a programmed, learnt behaviour, and they will go through life creating one toxic relationship for themselves, after another. They will feel justified in blaming their ex-partners, but at this point, they themselves know exactly what they are looking for.
The Need for Internal Change:
Addressing the Root: The key to breaking this cycle lies in addressing the root of the insecurity – the unmet needs and emotional wounds from childhood.
Self-Love and Security: Developing self-love, self-compassion, and a sense of inner security is crucial. This allows them to move beyond the need to seek validation and fulfilment from external sources.
The “needy” attacher’s search for a trustworthy partner is a desperate attempt to fulfil a deep-seated need for connection and security. It’s a reflection of their early experiences and the maladaptive strategies they developed to cope with those experiences. Breaking free from this pattern requires a shift in perspective, self-awareness, and a willingness to heal the emotional wounds of the past.
Dissociative Coping
The early child, lacking the cognitive capacity to fully understand the dynamics at play, will often internalize the blame and reject parts of themselves. This is where the concept of dissociation comes in, and it has a profound impact on development and well-being.
Here’s how dissociation plays a role:
Dissociation as a Coping Mechanism:
Overwhelming Emotions: The constant blame, criticism, and emotional neglect can create overwhelming feelings of shame, fear, and anxiety. This ultimately builds to a peak of mental distress that leads to a personal crisis, dramatically leading to overwhelming emotions.
Escape Mechanism: If the child is not comforted, and is still being overwhelmed, then the organismic self will act to avoid further distress, by distracting the child, At the same time, access to those very sad memories is removed. This is a dissociative function, the child’s memories and emotions from that past experience will no longer be accessible, and they will contribute to that child’s unconscious shadow. Dissociation acts as a temporary escape mechanism, allowing the child to detach from the painful reality of their situation. It’s a way to protect themselves from the emotional overload. However, recovery is a conscious act, if the child has forgotten that trauma, then it will not remember to recover the dissociation, even if its parents knew enough about themselves to show it how.
The Dissociated Self:
Fragmentation: Dissociation can lead to a fragmentation of the self, where different aspects of the personality become compartmentalized and disconnected.
Lost Parts: The child may dissociate from their true feelings, needs, and desires, creating a sense of emptiness or a disconnect from their own authentic self.
Long-Term Consequences:
Emotional Numbness: Over time, chronic dissociation can lead to emotional numbness, difficulty connecting with others, and a lack of genuine self-awareness.
identity confusion: The fragmented self can create a sense of identity confusion, making it difficult to understand who they are and what they want.
Relationship Difficulties: Dissociation can also impact relationships, making it challenging to form healthy attachments and experience intimacy.
Healing from Dissociation:
Self-awareness: The first step in healing from dissociation is becoming aware of its presence in your life. This may involve therapy or working with a mental health professional.
Reintegration: The process of healing involves reintegrating the dissociated parts of the self, allowing for a more complete and unified sense of identity.
Trauma Processing: Addressing the underlying trauma that led to dissociation is crucial. This may involve therapy, support groups, or other forms of healing work.
It’s important to remember that dissociation is a complex and often invisible issue. It’s a natural defence mechanism that can have significant consequences if left unaddressed. By understanding the impact of dissociation and seeking appropriate support, individuals can begin to heal and reclaim their true selves.
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