Research Catalog

Title

The trouble with blame : victims, perpetrators, and responsibility / Sharon Lamb.

Author

Lamb, Sharon

Publication

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

244 p.; 22 cm.

Summary

• Blame Society. Blame a bad upbringing. Blame the circumstances. Blame the victim - she may even blame herself. But what about the perpetrator? When the blame is all assigned, will anyone be left to take responsibility? This powerful book takes up the disturbing topic of victimization and blame as a pathology of our time and its consequences for personal responsibility. By probing the psychological dynamics of victims and perpetrators of rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence, Sharon Lamb seeks to answer some crucial questions: How do victims become victims and sometimes perpetrators? How can we break the psychological pattern of perpetrators blaming others and victims blaming themselves? How do victims and perpetrators view their actions and reactions? And how does our social response to them facilitate patterns of excuse?
• With clarity and compassion, Lamb examines the theories, excuses, and psychotherapies that strip victims of their power and perpetrators of their agency - and thus deprive them of the means to human dignity, healing, and reparation. She shows how the current practice of painting victims as pure innocents may actually help perpetrators of abuse shirk responsibility for their actions; they too can claim to be victims in their own right, passive and will-less in their wrongdoing.

Subject

• Attribution (Social psychology)
• Blame > Moral and ethical aspects
• Victims > Psychology

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-231) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. Who Is to Blame? -- 2. Victims -- 3. Perpetrators -- 4. Onlookers -- 5. The Making of Perpetrators and Victims -- 6. Forgiveness and Punishment.

ISBN

0674910109

LCCN

^^^95047457^

OCLC

33817681

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library