Victims, Perpetrators, and Bystanders

We encounter abuse and oppression in our lives everyday. Sometimes we are just a bystander observing abuse done to someone else, but from time to time we are the victim and from time to time we are the perpetrator.

Some people are quite comfortable being tough but bristle at the notion that they may be or may have been a victim. Others freely acknowledge that they are victims but are horrified if someone suggests that they may be a perpetrator or have any responsibility for the abuse occurring in their relationships with others.

Remember that we have two meanings for the word abuse depending on the context. In one context abuse is a quality of an event. Abuse is harm done when one acts to meet ones own needs at another's expense. In the other context abuse is a quality of the relationship which two people create together. Abuse is a violation of the fundamental nature of the structure of a relationship to meet one person's needs. It is manifest in a pattern of choices, not simply a single event. While such a distortion of the relationship can sometimes be a shared choice by both parties (as in fraternization), usually there is a perpetrator and a victim for either kind of abuse.

We then have two kinds of victims and perpetrators. The first kind of victim is someone who is harmed by a discrete event in the personal realm. I may be the victim of a car crash or my family may be the victim of a tornado. When I make a choice which results in harm to another, I am the perpetrator of the abuse. The second kind of victim is someone who is in a relationship in which the other, the perpetrator, routinely and systematically distorts the fundamental nature of the relationship.

In the Personal realm a victim is harmed by an event. In the Interpersonal realm the relationship is harmed, thus doing harm to the persons in the relationship. What then might be a victim or perpetrator in the Intrapersonal or Transpersonal realms?

Most of us have a part of ourselves which is a critic, sometimes a harsh critic, and that critic may focus its attention on others or it may focus on another part of ourselves. Some of us have been so routinely harmed in the Personal realm and have constructed or had constructed for us such oppressive relationships in the Interpersonal realm that we have a part of us which is merciless in its critique of our own behavior and/or the behavior of others, thus crippling ourselves personally and socially.

When we are harmed in our Personal, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal realms we carry that expectation into the Transpersonal realm. We see ourselves as someone that God doesn't love and perhaps even hates. God toys with us and it is our lot in life to be harmed. Being a victim is no longer a quality of an event or a relationship but a quality of our very being.

When we come to see ourselves as Victims in this spiritual sense we then either expect to be harmed or choose to protect ourselves by controlling everyone around us. Our map for who we are constructs behavior which gets us the very thing we don't want, indeed it creates the opposite of what we need.

The truth is we are all victims and we are all perpetrators of abuse. When we find it hard to see how we are both victims and perpetrators we may be experiencing identification with one or the other life stance. When we can't see that we are doing things which are harmful to others to meet our own needs, or when we can't see how our own needs are being compromised by the choices of those around us, we may have adopted a sense of ourselves which says, "I am tough," or "I am a victim." When we do this we are coming from a place which, while intended to protect us, actually deeply hinders our ability to construct healthy relationships.

And, as we have said, we are also bystanders. We see others around us making choices which are harmful to others. When those choosing and those being harmed are people we care about, we feel compelled to intervene to confront and protect. This is both a very generous and courageous impulse and one which can do as much harm as good. For that reason we want to be very careful about how we intervene.