Bullying: an analytical look at the causes

"Bullying," "buller," "mobbing," "harassment" – these terms have literally flooded social media feeds over the last three or four years, inviting comparison with newspaper headlines. Our attention was drawn to the mass research and "exposure" of the negative consequences of this phenomenon: almost every self-respecting child psychologist has consulted and given recommendations on this issue. Suddenly, it became a social phenomenon requiring understanding and counteraction! There must be reasons for this.

Harassment as a psychological phenomenon is as old as time: as children, we were read fairy tales about Bullying, and we sympathized with the "ugly duckling," and when we grew a little older – with the noble Othello, later we identified with the Scarecrow because we knew those feelings not by hearsay, and if we dig deeper, biblical scenes of Jesus walking to Golgotha come to mind.

I conclude that for this human need, namely "to use force against the weak, to persecute in order to finish off, to rule without mercy," there are archetypal foundations embedded in the depths of the human soul.

In this article, we would like to describe the external causes of bullying situations in children's groups and identify which psychological and social causes can infect a child or adolescent group and lead to harassment. But we will focus on the internal, deep-seated reasons that provoke a position of chronic victimhood.

Wikipedia gives the following definition:
"Harassment (colloquially Bullying) – aggressive persecution of one member of a group (especially groups of schoolchildren and students) by another. Bullying is organized by one person (the leader), sometimes with accomplices, while the majority remain witnesses. In bullying, the victim is unable to defend themselves from attacks; thus, bullying differs from a conflict where the forces of the parties are approximately equal. Bullying can be physical and/or psychological. It manifests itself in all age and social groups."

"Violence in school is always a public frenzy," said Alan Guggenbühl. This apt definition expands the field of imagination from the peculiarities of adolescence, which are often cited as a determining factor in bullying, to a larger-scale "underground world" of the soul that the growing adolescent personality encounters. Adolescence does not yet provide a fully formed Persona, and the Ego lacks the will to restrain the Shadow; therefore, anger and frustration break out and often flood the adolescent's consciousness with aggression towards themselves and towards the Other. This is the first individual encounter of a maturing person with their "underground world," with their Shadow, which at this age is always fueled by collective images of fear of power. The Shadow is our greatest challenge. And it is possible to deal with it in small portions.

Figuratively speaking, adolescent gangs are freely floating fears looking for a problem upon which they can unleash all the horror and shock of encountering individual responsibility for their primary instinctive aggression. Not everyone copes with this individual developmental task; collective forms of acting out (such as bullying in its various variations) can capture young souls. Violence among adolescents can take on totally primitive forms: harassment, slander, blackmail, threats, sexual harassment, incitement, vandalism (property damage), intimidation, stigmatization.

But there is another side: open violence, group violence becomes more visible from the outside, and therefore provides more opportunities for help to be given to all participants in this malignant process. Because, in the end, everyone involved in bullying suffers: the bully, the victim, and the bystanders.

My experience as an adolescent analytical psychologist suggests that adolescent bullying contains an unconscious cry for help directed at the adult world. It is an attempt to protect oneself and cope with the collective energies of evil that we all carry in the collective unconscious. Therefore, I agree with the general opinion about harassment expressed by adolescent psychologists from various fields regarding the position of the Adult (teacher, psychologist, administration). The "Adult" must take an active stance, clearly label it as violence, give a moral assessment, and say an unequivocal no. This position strengthens the child's weak Ego and protects them from unconscious collective impulses.

Changes in adolescence – when healthy children go through a period of transformation. Teenagers are not monsters, but children undergoing intense personal transformation. If we, as adults, are guided by this understanding, it will be easier for us to see the first signs of being caught up in collective bullying processes. But to do this, we ourselves need to be in touch with our own strong emotions: passion, anger, and rage.

BRIEFLY ABOUT THE EXTERNAL CAUSES OF BULLYING

1. The pronounced need of the age "to be in a pack." Children need to belong to a group, they need a "we," and this becomes a basic need for an adolescent. The requirement of psychological development at this stage is to leave the family group and be able to join a peer group. Adaptation versus autonomy. Every adolescent dreams of finding their "swan" flock, finding a friend and a company to which they would belong, and suffers "quietly" or "loudly" from isolation. This very need forces children to band together into packs, as they say, at any cost. It's safer this way, and rejection and loneliness are less obvious. This characteristic often leads to the formation of groups that may have negative leaders or unite, for example, "against someone" – this provides a temporary soothing experience of "we are together and everything is OK with us!" One last nuance: belonging to a "we" removes the responsibility of saying "I," which means engaging in self-reflection and thinking independently. A common mistake of adults is relying on the adolescent's self-reflection, on the internal work of moral qualities, when completely different laws and needs of this age are at play.
2. The next need for self-awareness: "Who am I? What qualities characterize me?" They may become aware of themselves by contrasting themselves with another – a primitive mechanism, but easier this way. The child feels better if they say "I am different," "I am opposite." The most difficult feeling for an adolescent is to feel defeated, fragile, or weak. This internal danger forces the adolescent to contrast themselves with the "weak" one being bullied, and align themselves with the group of "strong" ones who are bullying. This need creates conditions for group formation.

For adolescents, differences become a problem, and this gives rise to conflicts. Conflicts "because we are different," related to "otherness," are a difficult test for a teenager; they open up their "own underground world." The impact of conflict is tunnel vision, where perception narrows and differences take on particular significance; often in such situations, adolescents feel confusion and despair. Thinking becomes irrational, and at such moments, instant decisions are made as desperate attempts to preserve their innocence.

Next are moral and spiritual family guidelines: they are often tested by adolescents. That is, what parents taught and instilled in the child: "what is good and what is bad," "what is right – what is wrong," "what is most valuable – is not valuable" – the teenager questions everything; it is important for them to get their own answers to these questions about values and morality. The attitude towards adults becomes ambivalent; adults are perceived as opponents. In this regard, adolescents may also feel inner insecurity. You can often hear: "We're not bullying, we just don't like them, we're just teasing…" as if they are unable to establish distance and evaluate their own actions. The capacity for moral judgment is not yet fully formed in a teenager.

This age-related task, namely separating from parental guidelines, can also be viewed from an analytical perspective as an unconscious rehearsal of spontaneity. Adolescent semi-chaotic communities provide freedom of action for the unexpected; they learn to trust the unexpected! Any kind of normality (norms, rules, morality) is unbearable for them; teenagers love crazy ideas, and sometimes crazy actions.

Bullying is often explained from the standpoint of ethology and group hierarchy, based on the "hardwired" positions of the alpha individual and the omega individual, which in turn forms stars, average members, and outsiders in the group hierarchy. Do the laws of group dynamics come into play, where there is an alpha person and omega individuals, i.e., a leader who asserts and raises their status at the expense of the weak?

But this theory does not explain why there are groups without bullying, why some children's groups are defenseless against the group hierarchy embedded by nature, while others live humanely.

A frequent answer to this question is that in a group of children or pre-adolescents, the psychological atmosphere depends on the authoritative adult, and if they do not tolerate violence, there will be none. We can recall examples from our own childhood where a teacher's remark, mockery, or disapproval could largely be decisive in casting someone in the role of scapegoat.

Deepening this research, it is important to describe some analytical ideas that may shed light on the archaic need that, at a profound level, may explain the phenomenon of harassment, persecution, and the casting of the scapegoat role.

We can grasp the archetypal basis for bullying in the common expression "scapegoat." It derives from the ancient Jewish custom of once a year placing all one's sins onto a poor animal and sending it into the desert as food for demons. Very convenient. No need to change, no need to do anything, just transfer it to the goat and you're free. Similar mechanisms have existed and exist in all cultures. As old as time. Unfortunately, an adolescent pack chooses not a goat, but a boy or girl like themselves and dumps, 'projects,' their 'inconvenient' feelings, experiences, and shortcomings onto them. This provides temporary relief. Primitive mechanisms of projection are especially dangerous for the immature psyche of an adolescent who has not yet learned inner stability.

In a bullying situation, we encounter aggression of a primitive level, strong and cruel. This can be compared to evil. Marie-Louise von Franz, in her book "The Phenomena of Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales," examines "primitive level" evil in fairy tales, what, at a basic level, in those times, humans originally considered evil (von Franz, 2010, p. 180). Marie-Louise von Franz concludes that the phenomenon of evil in nature has qualities of the supernatural and numinous, therefore it enchants and evokes in humans pleasant excitement and fear simultaneously. She says: "It's like an avalanche, or lightning, or a terrible beast of prey. There are, for example, such things: illness and death, nature spirits, monsters, giants, which turn out to be just as real as other deadly natural phenomena, and we have to deal with them. If an avalanche comes down, you either put up a barrier against it or you escape from it; it would be foolish to do otherwise. If a river overflows its banks, you either build a dam or, if you lack the strength to pile stones, you retreat to a higher place on the bank, or climb a mountain. There is no ethical problem here, it's simply a matter of survival: if a person is able, they fight, and if not, they flee" (ibid., p. 182).

I would like to extrapolate this profound thought to the situation of bullying. Bullying in the school environment, like an avalanche for the person it is directed at, is deadly dangerous and is experienced on a primitive level as "evil." Then the healthy thought is to save oneself, to run; survival mechanisms should kick in. Therefore, one of the common recommendations of school psychologists is changing schools, as a healthy attempt to escape the destructive force of persecution.

I want to cite another study by zoologist Konrad Lorenz, who studied aggression and called it intraspecific. He identified manifestations of aggressive tendencies in the behavior patterns of various mammals, birds, and fish towards individuals of the same species. Speaking of intraspecific hostility, Lorenz refers to the struggle for food resources and territory, which is contested among the strongest males. For example, a blackbird pays no attention to a mouse that has settled on its territory but shows aggression towards another male blackbird.

This study of human natural instincts, as representatives of the animal world, points to the roots of behaviors such as violence, harassment, bullying as the awakening of instinctive tendencies towards intraspecific aggression. Probably that is why there are so many comparisons of the adolescent world to the animal world: pack, clan, jackals, etc.

To conclude this analytical investigation into the deep-seated reasons fueling outbursts of harassment and bullying among adolescents, I want to consider ancient initiation rituals. A ritual is a movement into depth. James Hollis writes: "Rituals are not invented – they are discovered, found, made; they are born when archetypal depth is reached… The very idea of transition contains a deep meaning, because any transition implies a certain completion, an end of something, and at the same time a beginning, the birth of something new" (Hollis, 2016, p. 24).

Transitional rituals have practically disappeared from our culture, but archaic memory remains. On an unconscious level, every adolescent seeks to undergo initiation. This is the transition from the world of childhood to the world of adulthood. Descriptions of the stages of ancient initiation rituals strike us with their cruelty; they always include physical and psychological pain, certain forms of isolation. James Hollis writes: "… the harshness of these trials was actually part of a wise understanding that suffering accelerates consciousness. Consciousness comes only through suffering; without suffering, expressed in one form or another – physical, emotional, or spiritual – we easily remain satisfied with old rules, comfortable habits, and dependencies" (Hollis, 2016, p. 28).

Initiation is always linked to the ability to endure suffering, to stay alone with that suffering, to be at one's own border point, to endure it, relying not on external forces but on internal ones, to find a source of strength within, in order to gain the experience: "I am an adult," "I coped," "I can rely on myself." To grow up, one must abandon the idea of returning under the care of adults; it is important to learn to use internal resources. No one suspects the existence of such resources until they have to use them.

To some extent, we all found ourselves in the victim position during adolescence. I don't think everyone experienced bullying, because that is massive, prolonged, targeted attacking behavior, but the feelings of being hunted, rejected, and experiencing loneliness are, in principle, a kind of norm that every adolescent must face for inner maturation. Bullying, to some extent, mistakenly imitates this initiation procedure. I have always wondered why not every teenager wants help! Perhaps, approaching the threshold of transition, adolescents are searching for their own "transition" ritual to a new, adult self. The modern world does not offer initiation rituals; we can assume that the surge in bullying situations is a pseudo-search for trials for growing up. But the main nuance is that initiation must happen in due time.

It is important for us to understand why some children cope with conflicts and find their group, while others fall into the role of victim and suffer abuse from the group.

Probably one of the first external reasons why a child is chosen for the victim role is their otherness or difference from the main peer group in any respect. We know that in nature, an animal that differs from others of its species may be driven out of the pack, ignored, or attacked. The same happens in the human environment, if children are not taught a different attitude towards otherness. Tolerance towards another race, culture, physical or mental characteristics of another person, respect for the individuality of another – these make us truly human! This is formed based on the values present in the group, society, and immediate environment in which the child grows up. This includes not only the family but also the school. At the same time, research (Olweus, 1974, 1993; Roland 1980; Lagerspetz 1982) suggests that external differences are not the primary reason for choosing a child for the victim role. (Rulani 2012, pp. 31-42). We adults sometimes slowly shape attitudes towards another child who is somehow different from us or our expectations. But most importantly, sometimes we shape this in our own children, because they too are somehow different, or differ from our expectations; they differ from what we would like them to be in our fantasies and dreams.

If parents accept the child as they are, believe in them, and respect them, the child develops a sense of self-worth and a "safe place" inside themselves. Such a child knows they have the right to defend themselves – perhaps verbally, or they have been taught some self-defense techniques. Such a child can stand up for themselves, stop the situation, or seek help.

INTERNAL PROBLEMS THAT FORM THE VICTIM POSITION IN A CHILD

Horst-Eberhard Richter writes about similar situations: "Parents inevitably hope that the child will make up for the opportunities they lost. They perceive the child as an improved copy of their own self and want to compensate for their failures with the child's successes. In extreme cases, the conflictual tension residing in the parents is so strong that they – albeit unconsciously – feel obliged to control and regulate the entire way of life of the child, as if the child always acts merely as their deputy, choosing their own happiness or guilt" (Richter 2019, p. 86).

The girl could not express herself, could not show her timid part. But this frightened part still existed within her. She could not rebel against her parents or show dissatisfaction; moreover, she always said that her parents, especially her mother, were very caring, even overprotective. But at school, real bullying began. The girl tried to communicate this indirectly, but since the victim situation is unbearable for the mother, she did not hear her daughter's suffering. The girl found no outlet and felt very alone in her trouble. She started getting interested in various suicidal groups and found a like-minded friend. The mother found out about this; the girl left a clue on purpose because, unconsciously, she wanted to be heard. The mother saw the information about these suicidal groups, remembered what the girl had said about being bullied and having problems with teachers, and transferred her to another school. But the mother did not change her demands, and everything continued the same way. The girl again found herself in the same situation. Everything repeated: bullying, suicidal thoughts, and one day a suicide attempt. Neighbors accidentally saw the girl sneaking onto the roof at night and stopped her.

When they came to therapy, it was interesting that the girl had an image of her mother as an ideal mother. She thought all of her mother's demands were legitimate, that her mother wanted what was best for her, which is why she forbade everything that distracted from studying. She considered herself ungrateful because she could not give up her "wrong hobbies" – drawing, dancing, anime. She suffered from the inability to meet her mother's demands, did not believe in her own strengths and abilities, and considered herself worthless and useless. Once, when we were discussing her passion for painting, I asked her which colors she liked and which she didn't like to use. She replied that she couldn't stand the color blue, that it made her feel very bad. I was surprised and asked why that color was so unpleasant for her. She explained that her mother's room walls are painted blue. And when she goes in there, she is paralyzed by fear, she becomes numb: "I am so afraid of that blue color that it's simply unbearable. Everything inside me starts shaking, I want to hide and shrivel up."

When a child cannot meet the inflated expectations of their parents, anxiety, guilt, and a self-perception of "I am bad!" arise inside. This results in an unbearable need for self-punishment. The child does everything to convince their surroundings that they are bad and demands punishment. Guilt provokes aggression directed against their own ego. Thus, the figures of persecutor and victim form internally. The bullying situation then allows the internal conflict to be externalized, but thereby only intensifies the child's suffering. This is one aspect of the formation of a child-victim, when the child's personality traits do not match the narcissistic expectations of the parents.

ADOPTED CHILDREN OFTEN EXPERIENCE BULLYING

A generalized example from practice: a child was adopted at a very early age, the family created a fairly safe environment for growth and development. In adolescence, the child leaves the family nest for society and may encounter targeted aggression. At first glance, it is not always clear what provokes such a fierce reaction from peers. Certain qualities cause strong irritation in peers, thus reconstructing the child's psycho-traumatic situation where they were already under attack from uncontrolled aggression. At a deep level, early deprivation and parental dysfunction experienced by the child in early childhood solidify into a message, an "inner verdict": "There is something wrong with you, you are not like that, you don't fit us." The adolescent environment reads this message and acts out the early persecution situation. The task of an infant, and then a young child, is to adapt in order to survive. And they adapt first to the care authorities, then to the adoptive family, but the pain of rejection, of being abandoned, this canker, it remains inside, figuratively speaking, growing and gaining strength. And often adolescence is that favorable time when the child can re-experience feelings of rejection and uselessness, to confirm that indeed there is something wrong with me, and I deserve exactly this kind of treatment.

Such is the sinister magic of trauma.

Bullying as an external traumatic factor must be stopped immediately, as we described earlier, but deep work at the level of psychotherapy and psychological assistance is equally important.

Psychotherapy can be that chance that allows one to live through the early trauma consciously, rather than creating an unconscious situation.

This applies to various psycho-traumatic events in the first period of life, when some marked adversity might have occurred; over time, the life situation might have stabilized, but in adolescence, the dormant pain in the unconscious can be reactivated.

THE CHILD WAS UNWANTED OR THE PARENTS WERE UNPREPARED FOR THEIR ARRIVAL

And the child got the opportunity to form her own sense of worth, strengthen her self-esteem, learn her birth story, and restore a "continuous line of life." This will provide inner support in the future.

Older brothers and sisters can become the first Bullies. Sometimes in families with three or more children, one child is chosen as the scapegoat; they are always guilty, they are bad, they attract negative emotions. As a result, they are beaten, called names, given bad nicknames.

When a child receives such a message from close siblings, it can leave a trauma inside that may later be played out by analogy in the adolescent environment.

Another turn of psychotrauma may be associated with a single incident of brutal violence (drunken fights, loud scandals, physical fights). The child is left with a feeling of inner danger, as if they remember that they can be attacked and harmed. For example, a mother might have lost control and beaten the child severely, or somehow unexpectedly displayed sharp aggressive behavior. Thus, a feeling of vulnerability may become encapsulated.

It is important to note that the traumatic situations described above may not necessarily lead to fixation on them, but practice shows that psychotrauma in early childhood can be a working hypothesis for investigating deeper unconscious causes in a situation of persecution.

Reflecting on psychotrauma, we as Jungian analysts often use the metaphor of the "solid foundation of the soul."

In working with adolescents, our main task is to strengthen precisely the foundation of the personality. After all, various events in our clients' lives will always occur, like periodic ripples on the water, so we work together with the client on the "solid foundation of the soul."