Here is another subject clients in this position consult us about. Cassandra and I have been scapegoated in the past ourselves, which enables us to help them.

The ego defence of displacement plays a role in scapegoating, in which uncomfortable feelings such as anger, frustration, envy and guilt are displaced and projected onto another. It is often the more vulnerable, person or group. The scapegoated target is persecuted, providing the person who inflicts the scapegoating not only with a conduit for their uncomfortable feelings, but also with pleasurable feelings of piety and self-righteous indignation. The creation of a villain necessarily implies that of a hero, even if both are purely fictional.

Some would say that Satan the Devil was used as a Scapegoat for sins and interestingly they also depict his image as half man half goat.

Read more here: Psychology Today.

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