Psychopathology of Victims of Aggression
By:
THEODORE MILLON and
Seth Grossman
Carrie Millon
Sarah Meagher
Rowena Ramnath
Self-defeating
personality disorder (called the masochistic personality in this text) was dropped
from the DSM-IV as a diagnostic category. The decision came after considerable
debate over the viability and clinical utility of the construct (Fiester,
1991).
Many
authors, in fact, have argued that the disorder was dropped for essentially
political reasons.
In
spite of the decision by the Axis II committee, the masochistic personality has
a long clinical tradition useful in describing the behavior of certain
patients.
Although
passivity under conditions of threat may be an adaptive response and,
therefore, should not be pathologized, some individuals seem to manifest
vulnerabilities that incite aggression from others. In the interpersonal
perspective, for example, the principle of complementarity holds that
submission elicits dominance from others.
Rather
than eliminate the masochist from DSM-IV,
it would have been wiser to have retained
it in the appendix as a provisional disorder in need of further study.
How
might such vulnerabilities arise? One possibility is child abuse (Chabrol et
al., 1995).The literature on childhood victimization suggests that children
chronically victimized by their peers suffer from deficits in self-esteem.
Perhaps children with low self-esteem are unable to fight back for some reason
or more readily become the focus of teasing or scapegoating.
In
fact, chronic victimization by peers during the school years is associated with
a variety of adjustment problems (Egan & Perry, 1998). Studies have found
that submissiveness and physical weakness, for example, may lead to increased
victimization over time (Hodges, Malone, & Perry, 1997; Schwartz, Dodge,
& Coie, 1993).
Egan
and Perry (1998) tested two hypotheses: First, low self-regard promotes
victimization by peers over time, and second, a child’s level of self-regard
modulates the impact of victimization. Results suggest that low self-regard,
particularly when assessed as a child’s self-perceived social competence within
the peer group, contributes to victimization. Moreover, a sense of social
failure and inadequacy among an individual’s peers leads to increases in
victimization over time. However, a sense of self-efficacy, measured as confidence
in an individual’s standing in the peer group, serves to protect at-risk
children from being victimized.
From
this perspective, masochistic behavior in adults could be seen as being on a
continuum with low self-regard within the peer group. As perceived competence
within the peer group decreases and self-regard declines, the individual at
first becomes the object of minor levels of victimization. With further declines,
however, victimization grows, until finally a sort of identification with the
aggressor takes place. Instead of trying to escape punishment, victims see
themselves as being so contemptible that such treatment is their due.
Masochism, then, could be seen as a maladaptive adjustment to extreme social inadequacy.
References
Personality Disorders in Modern Life,
second edition, 2000, 2004 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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