I don’t want to spend any time at
the moment cogitating over title alternatives, but I came across a word in
my keyboard travels yesterday that could be a contender – Unchosen.
This is a term used to describe
people who are part of a family network that includes a person who suffers from
a personality disorder (PD). They are called Unchosen because they had no
choice in entering into that relationship and may include children, parents,
siblings or extended family of a person with a PD. They are the unwilling,
often initially unknowing, participants in a smear campaign.
In this novel the protagonist is
the Unchosen; the target of the BP antagonist’s sustained smear and fear campaign that forms the
outline of the story.
It's an interesting concept, but in this post I wanted to summarise my findings on adult grooming and recruitment and use of Psychological Projection.
Adult Grooming is correspondent
to child grooming and applies to any situation where an adult is primed to
allow him or herself to be exploited or abused. While it is a common assumption
that grooming is only practiced on the very young, identical emotional and
psychological processes are commonly used to abuse or exploit adults. By
careful selection of words and posturing, recruits are groomed do much of the
dirty work for the BP, unaware, having been persuaded by the BP’s rendition of
truth. They take up the cause align themselves against the target.
The smear campaigner
frequently engineers situations in which
abuse is inflicted by another person and recruits friends, colleagues, family
members, authorities, or any other third party to do their work for them, using
them to threaten, stalk, convince, harass
and otherwise manipulate the target. Carefully crafted scenarios of embarrassment
and humiliation provoke social sanctions of condemnation, contempt, social
exclusion and shame against the target.
Defamation of character and
destroying the credibility of the target is the ultimate goal, while convincing
others that the target is the persecutor and they are the victim. Through use
of Projection (see below), the BP conducting the smear campaign, while perpetuating
constant, residual torment, claim they are in fact being tormented by their
target, creating rescuers who then take up their cause, believing they are
protecting the BP from the ‘bully’. Usually, the claims the BP makes about her
target are the truth, but about their own thoughts and actions.
When a person has uncomfortable
thoughts, feelings, or even behaviours, they may project these onto other
people, assigning the thoughts or feelings that they need to repress to a
convenient alternative target. Psychological Projection is a theory in
psychology in which humans defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by
denying their existence in themselves, while attributing them to others. For
example, a person who is a bully may accuse other people of being bullies. Projection
tends to come to the fore in normal people at times of crisis, but is more
commonly found in personalities functioning at a primitive level as in
narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder.
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For some reason I'm yet to fathom I'm unable to reply to comments left by others so thank you for dropping by and taking the time to read and comment. Merlene