The pathologies of victimhood

The researchers outline four components of this tendency. The first is the need for recognition of victimhood. Such individuals need to have their victimhood acknowledged by others and expect them to express sympathy for what they are enduring. Failure by others to recognize their suffering only deepens their sense of having been wronged, which in turn psychologically embeds the tendency to victimhood even more deeply. Above all, individuals with a tendency for interpersonal victimhood expect perceived perpetrators to take responsibility for what they have done and express remorse and a sense of guilt over their actions. The perceived perpetrator’s failure to acknowledge culpability often proves the most irksome slight of all, compounding mounting resentment.

A second feature of the tendency for interpersonal victimhood is moral elitism. Such individuals take their own “immaculate morality” for granted, just as surely as they are convinced of others’ malevolence. In comparison to those who have wronged them, they see themselves as fundamentally different and morally superior. It is not just that someone else has caused an injury, whether bodily, psychological, or reputational, but also that the action sprang from immoral, unjust, or selfish motives. Such individuals say to themselves, “If only everyone else were as morally good, committed to the happiness of others, and attentive to duty as I am, we would have no perpetrators and victims, but sadly others simply do not measure up to my level.”

A third feature is lack of empathy. Individuals with a tendency for interpersonal victimhood feel their own suffering very keenly, but they tend to be oblivious to the suffering of others. In a sense, such individuals are so attuned to their own sense of moral injury, like someone wearing high-volume headphones, that they cannot pick up notes of distress in others. Those in the throes of victimhood might deny that they have a selfish bone in their bodies, but their inner monologue and dialogue with others, if soberly examined, would often strike others as aggressively self-centered. It seems strange to say, but victimhood sometimes represents a kind of egoism, in the sense that afflicted individuals jealously protect their entitlement against others who claim to put forward their own grievances.