Victims, Villians, and Saviors

Clients frequently come into treatment expressing allegations and complaints about people close to them.  These allegations and complaints may be directed at spouses, siblings, or parents. Seeking the client’s loyalty, therapists often endorse these allegations.  At PsychLaw.net we find that as a result, client and therapist begin to think of the people with whom the client is disaffected, to some degree, as villains.  This often leads to the client assuming the role of a beleaguered victim; and the therapist evolves as an altruistic savior, assisting the client to contend with the villains of a “toxic family.”

When a significant person in a client’s life has been designated a “villain”, client and therapist gravitate into a closer alliance with each other.  Moreover, a designation as “victims” provides clients with an enhanced sense of potency that heretofore may have eluded them.  There is a great deal of secondary gain associated with the “victim” role.  Disregarding initial impressions to the contrary, a victim is actually more powerful than a villain.  Victims enjoy a virtuous reputation that inspires them, villains endure a malevolent reputation that humiliates them.

At PsychLaw.net we emphasize that when clients and therapists organize their relationship about the reciprocity of victim and savior, the identity of each demands the other persist in their role.  Victims need saviors, and saviors need victims.  Victims reassure saviors that they are in fact saviors, and saviors reassure victims that they are in fact victims.  When villains participate in the exchanges between victims and saviors, a triangulated relationship develop.^[1]   These triangulated relationships typically organize themselves about the premise: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend;” and as a result, they can persist for extended periods of time.^[2]

Therapists who create triangulated relationships act as if they ‑ and only they ‑ can assist their clients. As a result, these therapists often lure their clients’ into  excessive dependence.  Rather than solicit their clients’ dependency, effective therapists resolve the impasses that alienate clients from friends and family. An effective therapist assesses clients to identify the types of social support relevant to their needs.  Effective therapists ask themselves: Does the client need bolstered self‑esteem?  Does the client need information or help with day‑to‑day living?  Does the client need companionship?  The therapist then works to help the client’s friends or family members to increase the level of social support available to the client.  We at PsychLaw.net find that in circumstances such as these, the therapist progressively assumes a more peripheral role in relation to the client.  Simultaneously, friends and family emerge as the central figures they should be in the lives of the clients who need them.

Cross‑examining RE Victims, Villains, and Saviors.

1. In this case, your client came into therapy expressing complaints about ____ (fill in the blank) ‑‑ Correct?
2. And those complaints included ____, ____, and ____ ‑‑ Correct?

[Fill in the blanks with information obtained from treatment notes]

3. And you responded sympathetically to those complaints ‑‑ Correct?
4. And because you responded sympathetically to the client’s complaints, the client regarded you as a wise and perceptive person ‑‑ Correct?
5. By responding sympathetically to the client’s complaints, you may have encouraged him to think of himself as a victim ‑‑ Correct?
6. And in this exchange, the client thought of you as a savior ‑‑ Correct?
7. And you and the client thought of the people with whom the client was disaffected as villains ‑‑ Correct?
8. Have you ever heard the phrase, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”?
9. If you and I share the same enemies, we might become very loyal friends ‑‑ Correct?
10. In other words, if the court reporter is my enemy, and if the court reporter is your enemy, then we can predict that you and I will be friends ‑‑ Correct?
11. And this is the way you inspired loyalty in your client, her enemies became your enemies ‑‑ Correct?
12. And inspiring that kind of loyality in clients can make them dependent on you ‑‑ Correct?
13. And though the client was loyal to you, and developed a dependency on you, you never effectively assisted her in resolving the conflicts with the other people in her life ‑‑ Correct?

Strengths vs. Deficits.

The Freudian pursuit of insight predisposes legions of therapists to lead their clients into detailed analyses of their maladjustments.  Treatments focusing primarily on deficits suggest that clients must understand their many supposed maladjustments in great depth and detail.  In their determination to promote these kinds of insights, therapists can “prime” their dialogues with clients.

Therapists exercise priming effects via leading questions and other suggestive influences.  In turn, the responses expected of clients ‑ inventorying their many, supposed deficits ‑ prompts heightened therapist interest and attention.  Therefore, priming effects afford therapists the opportunity to lead clients into biased searches for their deficits and shortcomings.  Simultaneously, therapists overlook their clients’ strengths and resources.  We at PsychLaw.net find that these biased searches then leave clients more discouraged and pessimistic via mood‑congruent memory effects.

For almost 20 years, laboratory research has examined mood‑congruent memory effects.  This research demonstrates that induced mood states significantly influence how people think about themselves and their life situations.^{[3] , [4] , [5]}  Simply asking people to think about a sad event, for example, leads to significant increases in depression and anxiety.^[6]  Inducing a sad mood also increases the extent to which people anticipate negative events.^[7]  Conversely, inducing a happy mood prompts marked decreases in levels of depression and anxiety.  Creating an up‑beat mood also increases the level of expectations for positive events.

Persuading clients they must undergo detailed dissections of their problems and deficits arouses their depression and anxiety.  Increasing clients’ depression and anxiety, while also creating heightened expectations for negative events, decreases their self‑confidence.^[8]  Therefore, persistently examining the supposed shortcomings and deficits of clients leads to unfortunate outcomes.  Therapists who resort to these kinds of tactics create more needs for their services.  These tactics reduce clients to heightened self‑doubt and discouragement; and we at PsychLaw.net find that as a result, clients often conclude they need more therapy.  Unfortunately, legions of therapists describe such clients as “insightful.”

On the other hand, priming and mood‑congruent memory effects can also facilitate positive treatment effects.  Treatments that lead clients into detailed, comprehensive assessments of their strengths assist them more effectively.  This approach encourages clients to seek solutions for the problems that motivated their undertaking therapy in the first place.  In these circumstances, mood‑congruent memory effects arouse more optimistic expectations.  Clients inventory their existing strengths identifying how to most efficiently solve their problems.

Inventorying strengths moreover directs clients to issues of what needs to be done to cope more effectively.  Too often, inventorying client deficits deteriorates into a never‑ending, circular endeavor examining why those supposed deficits exist.  In other words, treatment questions of “What” motivate well‑defined courses of action compared to questions of “Why.”  Therefore, psychotherapy responds more effectively to the welfare of clients when it seeks to identify their strengths, as opposed to analyzing their deficits.

Cross‑examination RE Strengths vs. Deficits.

1. Your course of therapy focused in considerable detail on the client’s problems and deficits ‑‑ Correct?
2. And you wanted the client to insightfully understand her problems and deficits ‑‑ Correct?

[USE THE 22 FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS FROM PREVIOUS POSTS IF YOU HAVE NOT YET DONE SO]

3. You are familiar with the term “mood‑congruent memory effect” ‑‑ Correct?
4. The Journal of Systemic Therapies is a generally recognized and accepted, peer‑reviewed journal in your field ‑‑ Correct?
5. And Campbell’s definition of the mood‑congruent memory effect found in his 1996 article – “Systemic Therapies and Basic Research” ‑ published in the Journal of Systemic Therapies might be relevant to your work in this case ‑‑ Correct?
6. Please consider Campbell’s definition of the “mood‑congruent memory effect”:

– [ read ] –

“Laboratory research examining mood‑congruent memory effects has demonstrated that induced mood states significantly influence cognitive processes.”

Now my question: You can accept this definition of the mood‑congruent memory effect ‑‑ Correct?

7. The Journal of Clinical Psychology is also a generally recognized and accepted, peer‑reviewed journal in your field ‑‑ Correct?
8. And a 1993 study by Baker and Guttfreund published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology ‑ titled “The Effects of Written Autobiographical Recollection Induction Procedures on Mood” ‑ might be relevant to your opinions in this case ‑‑ Correct?
9. Please consider how Baker and Guttfreund described their study:

– [ read ] –

“Conditions One and Two consisted of subjects being asked to think of the two saddest and two happiest events of their lives, respectively … The procedure produced marked decreases in depression (p < .001) and anxiety (p <.001) as mood states in Condition One (happy events) and marked increases in depression (p < .001) and anxiety (p < .001) in Condition Two (sad events).”

Now my question: If thinking about sad events increases depression and anxiety, this is an example of how induced mood influences cognitive processes ‑‑ Correct?

10. When you and your client focused his attention on his problems and deficits, a sad mood  mood was induced ‑‑ Correct?
11. And we know that inducing sad moods can increase people’s feelings of depression and anxiety ‑‑ Correct?
12. Therefore, your leading this client into a detailed examination of her problems and deficits may have simply increased her feelings of depression and anxiety ‑‑ Correct?
13. And clients who experience progressively greater levels of depression and anxiety can conclude they need more therapy ‑‑ Correct?
14. In other words, a therapy that provokes heightened levels of depression and anxiety creates a need for its own services ‑‑ Correct?
15. That kind of therapy creates a need for its own services because increasingly depressed and anxious clients usually conclude they need more therapy ‑‑ Correct?
16. And some therapists call clients ‑ who think they need more therapy ‑ insightful ‑‑ Correct?
17. And as a result of the Baker and Guttfreund study, we also know that thinking about happy events decreases depression and anxiety ‑‑ Correct?
18. But in reviewing your treatment notes, you focused much more on the clients’ problems and deficits than you focused on his strengths and resources ‑‑ Correct?

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[1].       Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. New York: Jason Aronson.

[2].       Abelson, R.P. & Rosenberg, M.J. (1958). Symbolic psychologic: A model of attitudinal cognition. Behavioral Science, 3, 1‑13.

[3].       Bower, G.J. (1981). Mood and memory. American Psychologist, 36, 129‑148.

[4].       Clark, D.M. & Teasdale, J.D. (1982). Diurnal variation in clinical depression and accessibility of memories of positive and negative experiences. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 91, 87‑95.

[5].       Snyder, M. & White, P. (1982). Moods and memories: Elation, depression, and the remembering of the events of one’s life. Journal of Personality, 50, 149‑167.

[6].       Baker, R.C. & Guttfreund, D.G. (1993). The effects of written autobiographical recollection induction procedures on mood. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 49, 563‑567.

[7].       Hendrickx, L., Vlex, C. & Calje, H. (1992). Mood effects of subjective probability assessment. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 52, 256‑275.

[8].       Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‑Hall