Aggression Victimology - Treatment of the Victim (From Psychoanalytic Approaches With the Hostile and Violent Patient, P 47-64, 1984, Herbert S Strean, ed.)

• NCJ Number: 99606
• Author(s): I L Kutash
• Date Published: 1984
• Length: 18 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Based on studies of concentration camp survivors, battered children, rape victims, and masochists, this chapter presents a typology of victimization and outlines psychotherapeutic interventions appropriate to each type.

Abstract

Two major types are identified: situational aggression victims, whose acute or chronic victimization is beyond their control; and promotional aggression victims who, as a result of ego deficits, contribute to their own victimization. The latter group includes the impulsive victim who responds to a ego or self-esteem crisis by consciously or unconsciously endangering himself, the compulsive victim who chronically invites punishment as a result of early guilt or anxiety, and the characterological promotional victim who finds sexual or ego gratification from physical or psychological pain. Emotorestorative therapy aims at restoring situational victims to their pretrauma condition through an exploration of the attack and feelings toward it. Emotoremotivational therapy focuses on the promotional victims' feelings toward victimization and their unconscious motivations in contributing to the victimization and remotivating the victim to adopt less self-destructive patterns of behavior. Clinical vignettes, treatment procedures, and prognoses for these types are provided. Included are 38 references.