Projection – a psychological term for a process where people disown parts of their personality while accusing others of having those very traits.  Scroll down for a more detailed explanation, or click here.

Sabotage – a) an act or process tending to hamper or hurt b) deliberate subversion (from the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary)

Scapegoat – an individual who has been made to bear the brunt of responsibility for the faults or problems of others. Projecting their misdeeds onto someone else allows the perpetrators to eliminate negative feelings about themselves and provides a temporary sense of relief for them. However, once a scapegoat is selected by an individual or group, it is very difficult to break the cycle of blame. Unless the scapegoat chooses to either pass on the blame to a new scapegoat, leave the community where it is happening, or fight back, they will remain the repository of the perpetrator's aggression. See http://www.scapegoat.demon.co.uk/  for more information.

Slander – 1. Law. Oral communication of false statements injurious to a person's reputation. 2. A false tale or report maliciously uttered, tending to injure the reputation of another; the malicious utterance of defamatory reports; the dissemination of malicious tales or suggestions to the injury of another.

Sycophant – 1. A person who tries to please someone in order to gain a personal advantage. 2. A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favour by flattering influential people.

Transference – can occur when a person transfers their feelings about a particular person in their lives onto someone else. These feelings can be positive or negative. Scroll down for a more detailed explanation, or click here.

Witch War –  The regrettable use of vicious gossip and back biting which sometimes surrounds a dispute within Pagan culture; not restricted to Witches. The term "witch war" can refer to online flames, letter campaigns, fights in person and so forth. Responsible people do not support or practice this kind of behaviour.  (Pangaia)

The Bystander Effect

As stated above, people are less likely to offer help to someone in distress if there are many people present than if they witnessed it by themselves. This is because most people assume that someone else is bound to take action sooner or later. However, this is not the case. Many studies have shown that the more people there are who can help, the less likely each person is to offer help. Thus, when in a group, people are less likely to offer help than when they are alone.

As to how this applies to the Pagan community, most of us can recall a time when someone got viciously and/or unfairly flamed in an e-mail discussion. Ask yourself how many people came out on the side of the flamee? How many supported the flamer? Even when most people on an e-mail list may actually support the person being flamed, very few come out and say so - even though it is relatively safe (and anonymous) to do so. This is because we assume and hope that someone else will say something - then the moment passes and we hardly ever think of it again. In the meanwhile the person who got flamed is utterly forsaken, and has no idea that anyone actually supports them.

This can also happen with in-person bullying. A bully can treat someone like a dog in public, but no one says anything because they hope someone else will - but no one does. Thus the bully gets away with their b%&&$#!t.

Cognitive Dissonance

To further define this psychological term, let's look at a couple of examples.

Cognitive Dissonance occasionally happens among police officers. There have been cases where there has been a murder, and the investigation quickly focuses on one individual. There is a lot of forensic evidence, and some of it does not support their hypothesis of who committed the crime and why, so it is largely disregarded. The investigating officers become convinced that they have arrested the right person, and even a full confession from another party will not persuade them of the innocence of the person they initially focused on. It is often perfectly obvious to outside observers that the police are on the wrong track, but nothing will deflect them from their belief that they had arrested the right person, but the courts let them get away with murder.

How this applies to the Pagan community is among followers of bullies. If a bully convinces his or her followers that someone else is malevolent, there is usually very little anyone can do to change their perception. The more indoctrinated the person is, the less likely they are ever to admit they were duped by  the bully. Contrary evidence is disregarded, rationalized to fit their view, or seen as outright lies on the part of those defending the target.

As stated above, most people when presented with evidence that contradicts previously held beliefs will concede that they may have been wrong. However, even normally rational, objective individuals can suffer from Cognitive Dissonance to the point where they refuse to see what is perfectly obvious to everyone else - the beliefs that they held were flawed. See http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm for more information.

Displacement

Everyone gets angry from time to time, but we cannot always express our anger to the person who made us angry because it would be unsafe. Sometimes we "take out" our anger on someone or something else.

For example, say a man gets bawled out by his boss for something that was not entirely his fault. He could simply yell back, but that would risk his job. To express his anger at his boss, he therefore might yell at his support staff, or his family after he gets home. Nearly everyone does this from time to time.  An apology is made, and we get on with our lives.

However, displacement can lead to serious abuse if the person has a personality disorder. Let's say that someone in the community is angry with their mother for not accepting their path, and they enter into a conversation with someone who asks them an innocent question about their beliefs, so they blow up. If their personality disorder is pronounced, they may never apologize or forgive the person who questioned their faith. Bullying can escalate from this moment on, because they have displaced their anger at their mother onto this other person, simply because there will be fewer consequences for the bully than if they had yelled at their mother.

The Projection of Bullies

As stated above, projection is a psychological term for a process where people disown parts of their personality while accusing others of having those very traits.

For example, say a woman neglects her children. To admit this, even to herself, would be devastating to her psyche, so she projects the thing that she does not like about herself (the neglect of her children) onto someone else –– and most often onto someone who is doing the opposite. So then you have a lousy mother accusing an exemplary mother of being lazy, neglectful, abandoning, etc.

For an example of how this might work in the Pagan community, say a person has developed a nasty habit of lashing out at people every time they are disagreed with. Unable to admit that they are in fact behaving this way, they accuse the people they lash out at of doing that very thing to them. In the bully’s mind only, suddenly everyone is jumping down their throat for no reason, while in fact, it is the bully who is freaking out every time they hear a dissenting opinion.

When projection happens, the person doing it almost always picks on someone who is actually doing the opposite. They rarely accuse anyone who is also guilty of the action they are projecting.

If the people who project their disowned personality parts onto others merely believed it themselves, it would save everyone a lot of misery. Unfortunately the whole point of doing it in the first place is to distract everyone (including themselves) from their own activities and behaviour. Bullies who project therefore set out to make everyone else believe what they are actually saying about themselves, projected onto other people. This is where the wilder rumours come from –– the ones that don’t sound at all like they could be applied to the people you know.

What is truly sad about this is that people gleefully pass on the rumours without considering their source or even whether or not they are true. People pass judgment, and the target of the projection is ultimately ostracized for the bully’s behaviour, not their own.

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Sometimes people transfer their feelings about someone in their past life onto people in their present lives. Usually it is temporary, but in the mentally or emotionally disordered it can become serious.

A common example of transference is when a client begins to see their therapist as having the same loving personality as someone else in their life. This is partly why so many people fall in love with their therapists, clergymen, and other sympathetic individuals.

On the other hand, some people transfer negative feelings from the past onto innocent people. For example, say someone had an abusive father whom they have come to hate. One day at a Pub Moot they met a stranger who reminded them of their Dad for some reason, so they transferred their anger and hatred towards their father onto this new person. 

Most people might be a little freaked out by the similarities, and might keep their distance at first, but will recognize that this person is not their abusive father. People with personality disorders are not always able to make the distinction between their genuinely abusive father and this stranger for whom they have implacable hatred.  The discomfort they feel may lead them to try to oust the new person from the community.