In the French context, the term moral harassment emerged with the publication of the book by Marie-France Hirigoyen (1998). The author talks about daily violence and moral harassment. She makes a link with the notion of narcissistic pervert . This link leads to the emergence of the notion of victim - executioner whenever we talk about moral harassment. This vision is taken up in the law against moral harassment of 2002, reinforced in 2012.
By qualifying the adversary as a predator, regardless of the relationship, we validate a powerlessness in the face of someone who is excessively dangerous. In the face of fear, and when you think you can't get out of the relationship, you may tend to:
- avoid
- control the other, to the point of giving meaning to their powerlessness: we qualify the other independently of what we do, by saying “there is someone stronger than me”: he is a bully = he is a narcissistic pervert.
THE VICTIM
Often the victim has a need for recognition and she continues to fight hoping that one day he (the executioner) will recognize her value (“I have value and one day I hope he will recognize it”). She thinks she has the strength to be able to achieve this, but she, like Achille, (is weak because she) does not recognize her helplessness and her fragility in the relationship
THE EXECUTIONER
The executioner, like Goliath, is so entangled by his arsenal and his conviction of omnipotence that he does not realize his fragility.
Faced with this non-recognition, there is an increasingly harassing harasser and an increasingly fragile victim and the actors around who participate in spite of themselves in encysting the situation. The more one insists and justifies himself, the more the other tries to reassure him and the more the relationship becomes harassing.
The aim of the intervention will be to help the victim and the executioner to touch and display their own fragility.
