Scapegoating in Groups: A Challenge to the Leader
Cindy Miller Aron, MSW, CGP

People are both attracted to and repelled by difference. Perhaps this ambivalence originates in early wishes to merge with or separate from the maternal object. It is important for clinicians to understand and embrace the dynamics of difference. We encounter this challenge in our personal lives, in AGPA, and certainly in group therapy.

Scapegoating is a common occurrence in group treatment. The emergence of the scapegoat is a potentially destructive force that is often viewed by the therapist as a treatment failure. However, examining the dynamics of the group scapegoat can help us understand the potential the scapegoat has for a positive leadership role. Often the role is essential for the group to effect change. With appropriate interventions, the scapegoat provides group members with an opportunity for differentiation and increased autonomy.

Scapegoating in group treatment results from powerful intrapsychic and interpersonal forces. First, it is important to look at who is the scapegoat. The scapegoat is a group member who in some way is different. The scapegoat plays a divergent role, which then distinguishes him or her from other members. The scapegoat is the person willing to sacrifice, or the person the group is willing to sacrifice, in the service of maintaining the group's homogeneity. Ultimately the scapegoat is a non-conformist of some sort who plays a necessary role for the group.

Therapy groups generally begin with members seeking a sense of commonality. Similarities are sought and differences minimized. The therapist is usually idealized. The aim is to attain a feeling of security and belonging. This undifferentiated attachment enables members to cope with the many anxieties they bring to the therapeutic setting. The foundation for later differentiation is thus established. Rice (1992) describes the phenomenon of members consciously experiencing a sense of calm and connection, with simultaneous unconscious issues of wishing both to belong and to be separate, of loving and hating, and longing for nurture while fearing being consumed.

The next phase of group treatment is usually an unsettling time. Members begin to see differences among themselves and to experience the conflicts that accompany these differences. As these differences become more conscious, the shortcomings of the leader begin to emerge. The once blissful therapeutic environment of uniformity is threatened. The group may be experienced as unsafe, members untrustworthy, and the leader incompetent. This is a challenging phase of group treatment for therapists and for patients. It is also a crucial time with possibilities for growth in the capacity to embrace and tolerate difference. During this phase of group treatment the phenomenon of scapegoating is most likely to occur; patient anxiety is high, impulses are pressing, and containment is in question.

To understand how the scapegoat emerges, it is important to understand the concept and function of projective identification. First, the defense of projection means attributing one's unacceptable impulses or wishes to someone else. The defense, projective identification, takes the dynamics of projection one step further, with the object of the projection accepting the projection. It is an intrapsychic and interpersonal process as it involves changes in the projector and the object.

Malcus (1995) described the scapegoat as the repository for disowned group material. Members rid themselves of bad feelings to maintain a sense of the group's safety and goodness. For those who receive projections, the group becomes a scary and destructive place. The group member who becomes the object of projected content can have the experience of being manipulated into a particular role. Emotionally charged material can also be projected onto the group as a whole. 

The scapegoat is the repository of denied and repressed emotions and longings. Gemmill (1989) writes that scapegoating requires a forceful denial that any member, other than the scapegoat, possesses these attributes and emotions. For example, members may displace onto the scapegoat their sexual and aggressive feelings towards the leader. It is important to remember that what members dislike in the scapegoat is disliked in themselves. The scapegoating of a member emerges as a primitive attempt by the group to maintain individual psychic integrity and group stability in the face of the development of conflicts and differences.

Groups tend to have the following beliefs about scapegoating.

• If the scapegoat would change or leave, the group would return to a state of effective functioning.
• The scapegoat is simply a problem because of that individual's difficulties.
• The scapegoat is independent and autonomous of group forces.
• One becomes the group scapegoat solely as a result of personal characteristics, exclusive of the dynamics of the group.

As long as the scapegoat can be blamed, the system goes unexamined and unchanged (Gemmill, 1989). The scapegoat can also function to distract members from the uncertainties of life, maintaining the illusion that the leader can protect members from harm.

Scapegoating creates particular dynamics within the group that are potentially destructive. The scapegoated individual assumes a counterdependent posture relative to other members, and, thus, appears to be the only differentiated member in a seemingly homogeneous group (Lyndon, 1994). The scapegoat has, in essence, assumed a leadership role as the opposite of the idealized leader. When the therapist and the scapegoat are polarized, a developmental arrest in group life occurs, and treatment grinds to a halt.

Dugo and Beck (1984) state that the scapegoat has assumed a leadership role, characterized in part, by the conflict that occurs between the assertion of self and the pull to conform. Within this conflict is the opportunity to pursue the group task of differentiation. The scapegoat, seemingly the only differentiated member, needs to be once again part of the whole group. In this process, members reclaim projected material, thus allowing a more realistic view of self and other. As Malcus states, this process can produce authentic interpersonal closeness.

It is crucial that the scapegoat not be sacrificed in Old Testament fashion, either through members continuing their attack or through expelling the scapegoat from the group. Attacking members need to become familiar with their insecurities that are provoked by the behavior of the scapegoat. Once patients are able to develop an awareness of the scapegoating process, the therapist can proceed with exploring the viewpoints underlying the conflict and the sense of dissatisfaction at this stage in the group's life. This exploration allows the group to move from the first stage where differences are unacceptable and threatening to one where acknowledging and accepting differences is part of the group ambience. Group tensions are reduced by the notion of individual difference versus individuals being right or wrong. In this process members develop skills for resolving conflicts. Members are able to value one another, and the leader need not be feared or idealized. Finally, members are able to see that the therapist can be challenged and that this is a survivable experience.

In conclusion, the emergence of the scapegoat in group treatment is multi-purpose. It often occurs at a time when members need to shift from a state of fusion to one of increased separateness. The scapegoat role can provide a bridge across this treacherous intrapsychic and interpersonal territory. It is important for leaders to remember that groups move in and out of developmental stages at different times. As in life, the therapeutic process is not linear. As members experience the vicissitudes of the group over time, different individuals will act as projectors and recipients of group material. As Malcus states, the result is that each member experiences the group in good and bad ways, with resulting development of more integrated object relations and more autonomous functioning.

In a peculiar way, the scapegoat is an answer to members' need for separateness and connection. Through the process of addressing who the scapegoat is and the purpose he/she serves, the stage is set for group members to reestablish their sense of personal integrity and collective empowerment. On a larger scale, beyond our therapy rooms, possibilities for change within us all lie in our capacity to tolerate and embrace difference.

References

Dugo, J.M. and Beck, A.P. (1984). A Therapists' Guide to Issues of Intimacy and Hostility Viewed as Group-Level Phenomenon. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 34, 25-45.

Gemmill, Gary (1989). The Dynamics of Scapegoating in Small Groups. Small Group Behavior, Vol. 20, No.4, 406-418.

Lyndon, Piers (1994). The Leader and the Scapegoat: A Dependency Group Study. Group Analysis, 27:95-104.

Malcus, Larry (1995). Indiretct Scapegoating via Projective Identification and the Mother Group. International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, Vol. 45:55-69.

Rice, C. (1992) Handbook of Group Psychotherapy, In Klein, Bernard, Singer (Ed.), International University Press, Inc.

This article was published in the December 2002/January 2003 issue of The Group Circle