Victimization

Victimization can be defined as the act or process of someone being injured or damaged by another person. The resulting damage may be physical (e.g., bruises, broken bones) or psychological (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], depression). Victimization is a frequent event that occurs within an interpersonal context, often involving an abuse of power, such as a parent who abuses a child; an adult child who abuses a frail, elderly parent; or a teacher who sexually abuses a student. Although past research on victimization has tended to be compartmentalized, a more integrative approach is needed not only because of the frequent comorbidity among the different types of victimization, but also because of the shared psychological issues. The shared core psychological issues extending across types of victimization include damage to interpersonal relationships and self. Although victimization may often involve traumatic experiences, trauma may not involve victimization. For example, stepping off a curb and falling and breaking an ankle might be a traumatic event; however, such an event does not define an experience of victimization because it is not an interpersonal event.

To understand victimization, several core themes need to be acknowledged. Contrary to a layperson's perspective, victimization is not a rare event that occurs only in a stranger-on-stranger context. On the contrary, victimization is an extraordinarily frequent event that most often occurs in, and adheres to, the ordinary roles of human life. Although stereotyped conceptions of victimization do occur (e.g., a woman raped by a stranger walking down a street at night) and are damaging and need to be addressed, these types of victimization are not the norm outside the context of a war. Rather, the most significant sources of victimization are those that arise out of our ordinary day-to-day roles, such as those of spouse, parent, child, and friend. Thus, victimization must be understood as an inherent part of human relationships.

Unfortunately, research and writing about victimization is often compartmentalized or balkanized. For example, researchers who study child sexual abuse frequently do not consider the co-occurrence of other forms of victimization, such as physical abuse. Similarly, researchers who study physical abuse may fail to acknowledge the effects of witnessing domestic violence. This has lead to a failure to appreciate the total context of the victimization. Furthermore, such balkanization has led to the failure of researchers to create conceptual models that are organized around general concepts of victimization. Instead, most research and most models of victimization are limited to a particular context. As the field has matured, there is growing recognition that such balkanization can lead to failures to recognize the similarities in these experiences. In particular, such balkanization has prevented researchers from recognizing the common core of the victimization experience: the need to focus on the interpersonal nature and consequence of victimization.

This entry does not discuss victimization that is related to social and political processes such as war. Although war and genocide are grim fields from which victimization springs, such events are beyond the scope of this entry and require their own level of analysis and consideration. Likewise, victimization that is the result of living in a socially disintegrated or impoverished state (e.g., dangerous neighborhoods or extreme poverty), while profoundly damaging to human beings, is not discussed here.

...