Scapegoats, Archetypes, and the Roots of Personality Distress
A Post-Jungian Analysis
Our psychological landscape is often shaped by forces that go unseen and unacknowledged, particularly when it comes to personality and trauma. An essential yet frequently overlooked framework within mental health is the role of the scapegoat complex, an ancient social and familial mechanism that projects collective negativity onto a designated individual. This dynamic typically affects individuals who are more emotionally sensitive, attuned, or nonconformist, making them prime candidates for societal and familial projection. This article explores how the scapegoat complex manifests in various personality disorder clusters as expressions of archetypal roles, such as the Wanderer, Victim-Child, Accuser, Priest and External Redeemer, that arise in response to emotional and psychological scapegoating. Through these archetypes, we will trace a common thread in disorders typically viewed as separate entities, revealing them instead as varied expressions of a deeply rooted human dynamic. Which the Jungian analyst Sylvia Brinton Perera in her clinical practice and work also deeply worked with. As she noted this pattern that I am now outlining in the article.
Cluster A: The Wanderer and Victim-Child
Cluster A disorders, Paranoid, Schizoid, and Schizotypal, are often characterized by detachment, mistrust, and perceptions of difference. In individuals subjected to the scapegoat complex, these traits can reflect an exaggerated expression of the Wanderer and Victim-Child archetypes. Which they are identified with. These archetypes emerge as adaptive responses to the social isolation and alienation imposed on the scapegoat.
Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD): The Wanderer, who bears the weight of collective guilt and acts as the "shadow carrier," often manifests in heightened vigilance and distrust, hallmarks of Paranoid Personality Disorder. The sense of perpetual alienation leads to anticipation of rejection or betrayal, a reaction rooted in past experiences of scapegoating where the Wanderer internalizes the distrust projected onto them by others.
Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD): The Victim-Child archetype, marked by unresolved wounds and a resulting fear of emotional harm, may present as the classic detachment seen in Schizoid Personality Disorder. Emotional coldness becomes a defense mechanism, a learned adaptation to prevent further pain. In this case, the Victim-Child distances itself from others, avoiding potential harm by retreating into a world of self-sufficiency.
Schizotypal Personality Disorder (STPD): Schizotypal traits reflect the Wanderer’s sense of disconnection and perpetual search for belonging, contributing to the unusual perceptions and social anxiety typical of Schizotypal Personality Disorder. The intense feeling of "otherness" felt by the scapegoated individual can drive them to form unusual beliefs, a response to feeling excluded from accepted social norms and seeking meaning elsewhere. Often feeling this sense of their shadow being this radioactive material.
Cluster B: Victim-Child, Accuser, and External Redeemer
Cluster B disorders such as Borderline, Narcissistic, Histrionic, and Antisocial are often marked by emotional volatility and unstable relationships. In the context of the scapegoat complex, these traits can be traced back to Victim-Child, Accuser, and External Redeemer archetypes, each embodying the intense need for validation, worth, and control denied to the individual by their environment.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD): The Victim-Child’s emotional wounds echo in BPD’s abandonment fears, anger, and emotional instability. The Accuser archetype’s inner critic exacerbates feelings of inadequacy, while the External Redeemer aspect intensifies the need for external rescuers, leading to cycles of idealization and devaluation. As the person they seek, the Accepting Self remains elusive. This pattern emerges in those who, scapegoated from a young age, see others as potential sources of rescue or validation but also as threats of inevitable abandonment. The fear of the victim child, that feels itself beyond acceptance.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD): Narcissism often arises from a deep sense of inner shame, with the Accuser archetype manifesting as grandiosity to defend against feelings of unworthiness. Narcissism and those who display it are identified with the Accuser aspect of the complex. Pushing their shadow onto others, and thus create the various other reactions into those also scapegoated. The External Redeemer aspect also plays a role in Narcissistic Personality Disorder, seeking admiration as a way to escape the internalized belief that one must be "perfect" to be valued, a belief ingrained in them, where they become a husk that acts out the priest role (next to all kinds of societal roles), so they are "good enough" to distract from their family's dysfunction.
Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD): The Victim-Child’s desire for validation can lead to HPD’s intense focus on external approval, while the longing for acknowledgment manifests as dramatic displays, pointed towards a hoped for Accepting Self. Scapegoated individuals often find themselves overcompensating to gain attention as a counterbalance to the neglect and rejection they faced, mirroring the exaggerated emotional expression in Histrionic Personality Disorder.
Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD): The Accuser’s hostility and blame-shifting can culminate in ASPD’s disregard for societal norms, fueled by the alienation of the Wanderer. In an attempt to free oneself of the deeply harsh puritanical inner accuser the individual rebels in an effort to disregard societal norms entirely in a vain attempt to free oneself. So this can lead to impulsive or reckless behavior as a way of rebelling against a system perceived as unfair or hostile. The scapegoat, made into an outsider, may find solace in defying societal rules as a response to feeling perpetually misunderstood and rejected. Which actually feeds into their scapegoat and outsider status.
Cluster C: Victim-Child, Accuser, and Priest
Cluster C disorders such as Avoidant, Dependent, and Obsessive-Compulsive are associated with anxiety, avoidance, and a need for control. In the scapegoat complex, these patterns can stem from the Victim-Child, Accuser, and Priest archetypes, representing internalized beliefs that arise when the scapegoat is conditioned to feel inadequate and unworthy.
Avoidant Personality Disorder (AvPD): The Victim-Child’s sense of inadequacy and fear of rejection are central to Avoidant Personality Disorder. This need to avoid potential harm stems from a history of scapegoating, where the individual internalizes feelings of worthlessness and views connection as a risk. This also is often linked in an unconscious manner with their self-perception of being beyond acceptance, carriers of toxic material that need to be kept at bay.
Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD): The External Redeemer archetype, in conjunction with the Victim-Child’s fear of abandonment, results in Dependent Personality Disorder’s reliance on others for validation and guidance. This excessive reliance mirrors the scapegoat’s adaptive response to trauma, where the individual seeks validation and security from external figures due to a lack of internal safety.
Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD): The Priest archetype, marked by a rigid adherence to societal rules, aligns with OCPD’s need for order and control. This hyper-vigilant moral compass can be a defense mechanism for the scapegoated individual who seeks to maintain control over a chaotic internal and external world, internalizing the Accuser’s critical voice to enforce rigid standards as a barrier against further pain. The accuser feeds into the Victim-Child’s feelings of anxiety and feelings of beyond acceptance, which feeds into feelings of guilt, anxiety and an obsessive need for purity and rigid adherence to societal rules, to be perceived as pure. A fear of the shadow and instinct.
The Wanderer and Victim-Child in Social Withdrawal and Sensory Sensitivity
For emotionally sensitive individuals subjected to scapegoating, responses like social withdrawal and heightened sensitivity can also resemble autism spectrum traits. Whilst autism exists, this can lead to a misdiagnosis of the individuals real lived experience. Though to be fair people with autism are also scapegoated themselves by the neurotypical (societal norm) culture, that can’t accept what deviates from the emotional-aesthetic norm. The Wanderer and Victim-Child archetypes provide a framework to understand this response, particularly in cases where trauma responses are mistaken for neurodevelopmental traits.
Social Withdrawal and Atypical Social Skills: The Wanderer’s sense of disconnect, combined with the Victim-Child’s protective withdrawal, may appear as social difficulties similar to autism. However, in sensitive individuals, these traits often arise not from neurodivergence but as a protective response to perceived threats and rejection.
Sensory Sensitivities and Repetitive Behaviors: Emotional attunement and hypervigilance, common in scapegoats, may lead to sensory sensitivities and ritualistic behaviors that resemble autism. Yet these behaviors can often be traced back to the individual’s adaptation to chronic emotional and sensory stress, highlighting a crucial difference between true neurodevelopmental traits and trauma-based responses.
Societal Dysfunction and Individual Sensitivity
So as much as those with a "disorder" are seen as sick, the society they are part of is truly the one dysfunctional. They are just the most sensitive ones that, manifest the symptoms. It is just that those with the "disorder" are the ones being the designated patient of the society they live in, who manifest the symptoms of the societal "disorder" and disconnect from reality. Hence our current society already having a baseline level of dissociation of sorts from emotions and the body for many. Hence the increase in depression, drinking and all the various other ills and symptoms we see that affect people's well-being. They are misaligned attitudes due to inner conflicts and internalised beliefs and trauma, rather than flaws or pathologies. It is important to understand that the psyche and with it the Jungian Self is a self-regulating system that responds to trauma, societal repression, and misalignment. It is our ego and attitude that gets in the way of the process.
The Disconnection from Emotions and Reality
A lot of that ties into duality and the classification of everything into dualities, like virtue versus sin, which itself creates sinners/scapegoats and redeemed/pure ones. Which does not see how the real issue is not in the individual, but their actions, which are there due to trauma, ignorance, too rigid societal norms and historical trauma's that distort the real underlying complexity of the human experience. Meaning that the narratives and stories that people are told in the culture and by their families, can create harmful behaviours that repress parts of the psyche of an individual, and with that even an entire culture.
Repressed by an "ideal" which does not account for the reality of things. Like men should be stoic and without emotions, which does not see the fact that men are humans with emotions too. So when in this case men are taught to repress it, or been through shaming experiences or trauma related to it, they project and enforce this onto other men too, next to starting to see female experience and their emotions as a source of fear and chaos. Putting the blame onto emotions of women, or other people. Where the problem is not the emotions, but the inability of some people to know how to properly understand them. What’s often viewed as a disorder is instead an adaptive response to cultural and familial trauma.
Projection of Cultural Fears
And on a larger scale this same behaviour causes cultures to project their fears and insecurities onto other people and entire groups and cultures. As it is easier to blame someone who has nothing to do with it, than to acknowledge the fact that oneself and the culture is not perfect. The culture wants to see itself as “pure” and as if this is true “reality”, what the narratives of the societal conditioning says. If it does not conform, due to differences in human expression, what is repressed in the culture, represses aspects in others, where the most sensitive people become the scapegoats for this cultural repression and dysfunction. Through this it manifests within them as symptoms.
Yet these are a manifestation of their socio-cultural environment and internalised scapegoat role, which creates the trauma and unconscious identifications and roles. It is not their inherent nature at all. If they can be freed from these unconscious identifications and roles, and the shadow material they carry from the culture is released, where only their true shadow is acknowledged which is part of their lived experience and internal pain, and not false narratives about their emotions, or other aspects that are culturally demonised and lead to distortions in behaviour, then their symptoms will also go away. However this does mean that the larger systemic dysfunction in society has to be addressed as well. Healing is communal. Societal structures, and their internalisation in people, require substantial change, not the individual themselves. As in needing to better adhere to some impossible ideal that does not account for human nature in its obsession of hyper-rationality. They are at least partially, social constructions rooted in deep-seated cultural dysfunction rather than inherent individual flaws. That are thus induced in the person and manifest as real pain and psychological distress.
Beyond Individual Pathology
So whilst their symptoms and pain are real and should be treated properly. They should be understood within the larger context of both their individual lived experience, and familial and socio-cultural context. As this directly ties into their deeper issues and root cause of their “disorder”. If one can help them detangle from these familial and socio-cultural influences and the tied cultural complexes (societal norms), that do not account for the full nature of the human experience (including the full range of emotions, instinctual nature and other aspects), we fail to fully help them heal, and with it fail to heal society at large from its dysfunction. In a more spiritual sense, to contextualise this, we continually make the same sin of nailing Jesus to the cross as eternal scapegoat, and do this to people every generation. No one has to suffer or become the scapegoat or carrier of the dysfunction of society. It is the responsibility of any true healer to know that there is no sickness here and health there. Any chaos that manifests itself either socially, culturally or within individuals is a manifestation of a disconnect of the societal norms governing society from reality. Which thus has become disordered and diseased. Calling certain people who take the full brunt of this “disordered”, “broken”, “flawed” or the “problem”, is a shadow projection onto them. These people are manifesting a kind of “collective disorder,” taking on symptoms that reflect unprocessed cultural and familial trauma. Which a friend coined Solar Madness. What we see in people are natural (if painful) responses to a dysfunctional system.