Posted by Lilly from ? (160.129.202.45) on Friday, May 24, 2002 at 2:27PM :
In Reply to: Re: psychology posted by Lilly from ? (160.129.27.22) on Thursday, May 23, 2002 at 5:25PM :
: Other times, the victim can in some sense deny victimhood, not forget, but reject the definition of and redefine the actions of the oppressor that are meant to confine the victim to a powerless role. This last way is the hardest, because it involves a lot more energy (in the form of thought, esp. about the source of one's emotion) and time than simply reflecting or negating the oppressor.
xxx I suppose that people who do this are not denying that they were hurt at some point in their past by an oppressor, but they refuse to let themselves be defined as "victims" (of a past oppressor) in the present. So, here persons who were once victims of some oppressor(s), aware of their past, minimize the "damage" done to them by "picking up where they left off" - continuing their lives with the knowledge of the incident stored in their memory, how it has affected them, how they can avoid this in the future, what warning signs of oncoming harm looks like, how to protect themselves, but not living their lives bogged down by past hurtful experiences.
-- Lilly
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