The scapegoat phenomenon will be described as enemy behaviour against an innocent and helpless victim, because the real source of frustration is not available or cannot be addressed for whatever reason. - Bob van der Meer Blaming the scapegoat for one's ills - or group ills - is almost the same thing that causes men to harm innocent children or mistreat animals. Frustration is acted out and projected onto somebody else, usually on someone without supporters or otherwise unable to protect herself or himself. Often scapegoaters, in their own minds, manage to convince themselves that what they are doing is somehow right. And bystanders, on the other hand, usually don't want to interfere, and thus scapegoat is alone. As personalities scapegoaters are usually dissatisfied with their own lives and themselves, and also with life in general. They may be self-righteous and hostile, sometimes even punitive and sadistic types, who get narcissistic gratification in controlling or even torturing the scapegoat. They raise themselves by lowering the other person. Often scapegoating can be seen as an example of projective identification. But in milder cases the scapegoater can be anyone temporarily dissatisfied and angry, but these occasional scapegoaters usually experience some shame and guilt afterwards, others don't. Most scapegoaters are not in touch with their own feelings, often they have no idea of how full of hate they really are, they are just dissatisfied and frustrated but also blissfully unaware of the original source of their frustration. Or at least they are unable to direct their anger to the original source. Often they manage, in their own minds, to turn things around and begin to believe that the scapegoat is somehow responsible for their frustration. A very suitable scapegoat candidate might be, for instance, someone who accidentally looks like whoever was the source of the original frustration (often a father or mother figure). Often the main scapegoater has a good social standing in the group and also some power. And as you can guess, the scapegoater does not want to lose that, no matter what. This means, that even if the scapegoater would gradually begin to see the innocence of the victim, the scapegoater might still throw more mud just to preserve her or his standing knowing that the mud will stick even to the innocent person. And assistant scapegoaters may do the same because they hate admitting that they have been duped, gullible and completely dishonest in blaming the scapegoat. They hate to admit they are wrong. To sum up, the main characteristics of a scapegoater are egotism, pride, self-righteousness, immaturity, dishonesty, weakness and cowardess.
