Evil dwells in the heart of the criminal without being felt there. It is felt in the heart of the man who is afflicted and innocent. - Simone Weil
Usually scapegoaters are people who have problems with their own instincts, they cannot satisfy them spontaneously, neither can they control them, instead they satisfy them vicariously through the scapegoat, sometimes trying to create a sado-masochistic relationship with the victim. There is usually also a lot of desire for power - scapegoaters seem to believe that if only the offending person, the scapegoat, could somehow be eliminated or mastered, all would be well. Some scapegoaters and persecutors have a background of once having been victims themselves, but not knowing it. If they were consciously aware of what has been once done to them, they might not have to project it onto others. As Alice Miller wrote: "Consciously experiencing one's own victimization instead of trying to ward it off provides a protection against sadism; i.e., the compulsion to torment and humiliate others." Many scapegoaters actively avoid looking at themselves, they are always on the lookout for someone to walk over, just to feel better themselves. In many ways scapegoating can be seen as a kind of symbolic cannibalism. Primitive man eats human flesh because of its symbolic characteristics, or he endows animals with human qualities. The modern scapegoater endows persons with subhuman qualities and eats his victim's soul in the process. He simply does not treat his victim as fully human. He lacks compassion, awareness, and psychological know-how. "Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat", wrote Ernest Bevin. Scapegoaters may repress guilt feelings, but they can't avoid their subliminal effect. At least, not for ever. Thus scapegoaters may not totally avoid the consequences, which means that they suffer or will suffer too, although for a long time those subliminal guilt feelings in trying to surface into the consciousness may just aggravate scapegoaters to do some more scapegoating. And this again creates unconscious guilt feelings, and thus it goes on... He who brings sorrow with him stifles more happiness within himself than in the man he overwhelms. - Maeterlinck
