“Who is to blame” and what to do about it?

“Who started first?” – this formidable question announces playgrounds and schoolyards from time immemorial. And troublemakers from century to century mutter: “It’s not me, it’s all him!” Well, the children are sensibly assessing the situation. They know perfectly well that the guilty one will be punished, so let them both be punished at least! In addition, even an inveterate fighter does not want to admit that he is the very “bad boy” about whom his mother speaks with such horror.

This terrible “other”

But even as adults, we continue to play out the same scenario with amazing tenacity. Of course, no one has asked us sacramental questions for a long time – but we continue to answer! Listen. Parents: “You visit us too rarely” – adult children: “You are too demanding.” She: “You only think about yourself,” he: “You always reproach me for something.” Colleagues: “He constantly criticizes everything that I do, he does not trust me.” “She’s so touchy, you can’t say a word to her.” Neighbors: “Those young people upstairs make noise all the time, they are terribly brought up.” “The old people below are always dissatisfied with something and are looking for something to complain about” … In any situation, someone else is to blame, not me.

Psychologist Charles Rojzman’s specialty is conflict resolution: “Unwillingness to take responsibility is the most important problem in human relations.” He explains: during any conflict, an overly negative, demonized image of the “other” inevitably arises in our minds, and we immediately unwittingly find ourselves in the position of a victim who simply cannot be responsible for what is happening. This mechanism, without allowing the slightest failure, works in every conflict. And it testifies to the old wounds in the soul of each of us, the psychologist continues: “Everyone at one time or another in life happened to be in the position of being humiliated or abandoned, in the position of a person who was rudely or cruelly treated, who was blamed. In other words, as a victim of one of the forms of violence. And the conflict that happens in the present every time awakens in us this past pain. Overwhelmed by our fantasies and unconscious fears, we lose contact with reality. And the “other” suddenly becomes a monster in our eyes – without any objective reason.

Representing the victim

Our relationships with people develop according to a scenario that we unconsciously play out over and over again, notes psychoanalyst Valerie Blanco*. “None of us, without resorting to deep work on ourselves, is unable to understand what is only a toy of unconscious patterns. And he constantly reproduces the same painful situations. For example, a person who is tormented by the fact that he was humiliated does not suspect that he will now interpret every conflict from the point of view of his own humiliation. Moreover, without realizing it, he himself will provoke situations of humiliation and at the same time sincerely consider himself a “victim”, stubbornly ignoring his share of responsibility. And, in fact, such a person is even right. But he completely misjudges whose victim he turned out to be. He considers himself a victim of the “other”, and suffers primarily from his own unconscious attitudes.

We are all victims of our personal stories, cruel words (once said by parents, teachers, friends), unsuccessful acquaintances … This past smolders in us like coals covered with ashes to flare up again and again in moments of conflict. And it hurts to burn. “That is why we do not know how to behave correctly in a conflict situation,” explains Charles Roizman. Of course, this is not easy: any conflict primarily appeals to instincts – the most impulsive side of the personality. But when each of the participants in the confrontation also closes in the role of a victim, no resolution of the situation is possible at all. All that remains is violence: sometimes implicit and only threatening with danger, and sometimes, on the contrary, rude and disproportionate to the occasion. And extinguishing this ever-smoldering tension is no easier than a burning peat bog: a new outbreak is almost inevitable.

“To avoid this, it is necessary to return to reality,” continues Charles Roizman. – To put aside my fantasies and understand that the other one I see in front of me is not a monster, but a man. A person who can be respected and listened to, even completely disagreeing with her. And I can also declare my disagreement – calmly and openly. The creator of social therapy is sure that only the conscious responsibility of everyone makes it possible to move from senseless violence to a conflict that can be reasonably resolved. To accept your share of responsibility means not to resolve the conflict, but only to enter into it. But even this is already a step into rational territory, where a way out can be found. By refusing to enter into conflict, we forget that it is not only inevitable, but also useful. “He gives us the opportunity to voice our grievances,” assures Charles Roizman, “and change relationships in accordance with our needs.”

A bad peace and a good quarrel

“The aggressiveness that we can feel in ourselves and quite reasonably assume in others is the factor that violates our relations with our neighbors,” said Sigmund Freud **. We are driven to conflict not so much by differences as by similarities: the closer we are to each other, the more similar our desires are and the more we begin to compete. This principle of the “imitative mechanism” is beautifully described by the philosopher René Girard, the creator of the “scapegoat” theory: “If I live in the same environment as my role model, if he is really my “neighbor”, then his things are available and for me. As a result, rivalry arises. And the German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel stated that the strength of the conflict is directly proportional to the community of opponents. At the same time, of all the reasons for the confrontation, “there are two that underlie a particularly strong antagonism: common qualities and belonging to a single social environment” ****. It seems that now it becomes clearer why family meetings rarely take place in a completely idyllic atmosphere …

However, maybe it’s not so bad? Immanuel Kant saw disputes as a source of progress and a way to go beyond the usual possibilities*****. The natural ability of man to conflict is our chance, it opens the way to change, liberation, and sometimes to the birth of a new society. Conflict can not only save us, but paradoxically bring us closer. Georg Simmel considered it a “model of socialization”, an occasion for making connections. The reasons for our disagreements can be very different. But when the conflict has already erupted, it is this that serves as the way in which we are able to come to unity – whatever it is. Expressing one’s desires or opinions directly, discussing differences, and finally reaching agreement is a true (and hopeful) dialectic of conflict. And to put it simply, the strangeness of any dispute lies in the fact that friends come out of it, becoming friends even stronger, and lovers – even more loving each other.

* V. Blanco “Sofa fingers” (L’Harmattan, 2010).

** Z. Freud “Dissatisfaction with culture”, in the collection “I” and “It” (Azbuka-klassika, 2007).

*** R. Girard “Scapegoat” (Ivan Limbakh Publishing House, 2010).

**** G. Simmel “The Conflict of Modern Culture”, in the collection “Georg Simmel. Selected works” (Nika-Center, 2006).

***** I. Kant “The idea of ​​universal history in the world-civil plan” (Direct-Media, 2007).