From the course: Persecutors, Victims, and Rescuers: How to Deal with Psychological Games Players

The three positions

From the course: Persecutors, Victims, and Rescuers: How to Deal with Psychological Games Players

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The three positions

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- So in this video, I want to tell you about the drama triangle: persecutor, victim, and rescuer. I've already been mentioning these during some of the earlier videos as positions people can take up when they interact with other people. You can be a persecutor or whatever. But these form a very specific triangle that people move around and you can have any one of these three starting positions: persecutor, victim, and rescuer. Let's look at each of those in a bit of detail. So persecutors have domination as their prevalent style of interaction. They must always be right. And techniques include blaming, preaching, interrogating, and criticizing. They've switched off their caring, nurturing side long ago. They deny that they've got any weaknesses and they need at least one victim in order to sustain their position of being one up, although their persecuting comes originally from a position of victim. "I've been treated unfairly and somebody's going to pay." And they need to then find a victim. The second starting point is to be a rescuer. And rescuers get to feel worthwhile by taking care of others. Sometimes it's the only real way that they have to connect with other people. They have the subconscious hope that if they could just take care of others well enough then they'll get their turn too. But unfortunately this rarely happens. And their rescuing makes everyone, the rescuer, the victim, and any observers, it makes everyone become convinced that the victim is incapable or inadequate, thus reinforcing the need for constant rescue. Having a victim to take care of is essential for the rescuer to continue to feel one up. And then the third starting position is the victim. Victims have discovered that they can have an easy life by blaming other people, avoiding responsibility, and waiting for other people to help them, whether or not the help actually ever arrives. Victims are often people who were raised by a persecutor or a rescuer or both. Imagine having two parents, one's a persecutor and one's a rescuer. You're definitely going to be a victim then. So they've switched off their problem-solving abilities and they tend to look for rescuers. It's easier than taking responsibility for your life yourself. So victims need a rescuer or a persecutor. And rescuers and persecutors need victims. And so it goes on. Games are even played internationally. So the USA sees itself as a rescuer, often with Russia as the persecutor and the rest of the world as the victims. But oddly enough, Russia sees it the other way around, with themselves as the victim. And games played between whole continents can be very dangerous. So that's the triangle of persecutor, victim, and rescuer. And we're going to explore that in some detail coming up. But next we need to look at what's the payoff for this? Why do people play these games?

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