The Oxford English Dictionary defines a victim as someone who is “injured, damaged, or killed by something.” Experiences and stories of victimization run the gamut from the personal to the political. As a psychoanalyst, I often hear reports from my patients of feelings of victimization. I try both to empathize with my patients’ suffering and understand its unconscious meanings.
But victimhood, real or imagined, has also come to assume a central role in social, political, and cultural discourse in the U.S. A victim sensibility seems clearly to be on the rise across the political spectrum, especially on the right. But while real people are victimized in the real world all the time, not all victimization stories are the same. Some are counterfeit.
