Scapegoating occupies a pivotal position within the depth-psychological corpus, functioning simultaneously as a clinical phenomenon, a ritual archetype, and a collective defense mechanism. Erich Neumann supplies the most sustained theoretical treatment, tracing scapegoat psychology from its archaic religious substrate—in which the High Priest ritually transferred collective sins to a sacrificial animal—through its devolution into an unconscious mechanism by which communities expel outstanding or deviant individuals rather than integrate the shadow. Jung’s contribution is equally foundational: projection, he argues, is the engine of scapegoating, wherein that which remains unconscious in the self is discovered and condemned in the neighbor. In the clinical literature, Yalom demonstrates how scapegoating emerges as a measurable group-as-a-whole phenomenon within therapy groups, particularly when displaced aggression attaches to a deviant member; the therapist’s explicit preventive function is underscored. Pargament introduces the concept of ‘religious scapegoating,’ wherein theological explanation is weaponized to assign blame disproportionately to already-burdened individuals. Schwartz and Internal Family Systems theory extend scapegoating into family and social-system dynamics. Across these positions, the unifying tension is between scapegoating as an archaic, psychologically necessary purgation and scapegoating as a moral and therapeutic failure demanding conscious intervention.
evil is recognised as belonging to the collective structure of one’s own tribe and is eliminated in a collective manner—for example by the High Priest transferring the sins of the people to the scapegoat as a vicarious sacrifice.
Neumann locates the scapegoat ritual as the earliest collective mechanism for making evil conscious through projection and communal elimination rather than individual moral reckoning.
, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, 1949thesis
All nations and all periods of time have contributed to this scape-goat sacrifice of the outstanding, even if the ritual is nowadays no longer conscious but unconscious—a somewhat doubtful piece of progress.
Neumann argues that the scapegoating of culturally superior individuals—from Socrates to Galileo—is a universal, now-unconscious collective defense against the demands of outstanding personalities.
, Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, 1949thesis
Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly. We no longer subject him to the test of drinking poison; we do not burn him or put the screws on him; but we injure him by means of moral verdicts pronounced with the deepest conviction.
Jung identifies projection of the unconscious shadow as the psychological engine driving modern scapegoating, which has merely exchanged physical persecution for moral condemnation.
, Civilization in Transition, 1964thesis
those people who take it seriously must invent the idea of the scapegoat that is sent out into the desert to deal with their own sins, and they take Christ as the scape-goat. They burden him since he is the crucified, deified scapegoat.
Jung interprets Christ as the deified scapegoat onto whom the Protestant conscience projects its own unresolved shadow, revealing the religious scapegoat mechanism as a psychologically driven displacement.
, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988thesis
He might, for example, have raised the issue of whether the ‘group’ needed a scapegoat and whether, with Kate gone, Burt filled the scapegoat role; or whether the ‘group’ was actively avoiding an important issue.
Yalom frames scapegoating as a group-as-a-whole phenomenon in which the group unconsciously assigns a deviant role to one member in order to avoid confronting its own shared conflicts.
, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, 2008thesis
The end result is a nasty form of religious scapegoating. Already burdened by illness, the person with AIDS is asked to bear the brunt of the blame for his or her condition.
Pargament identifies religious scapegoating as a pathological appraisal process in which theological explanation is used to assign disproportionate blame to vulnerable individuals, displacing empirical and systemic causality.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
This approach reduces the hazard of scapegoating and illuminates the role played by the group in each member’s behavior.
Yalom prescribes a dual focus on both the monopolizing individual and the enabling group as the primary clinical intervention against scapegoating dynamics.
, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, 2008supporting
If the therapist has prevented scapegoating, then this statement is always untrue: the client is in a particularly familiar place. What is different in the group is the presence of norms that permit the others to comment openly on her behavior.
Yalom identifies the therapist’s active prevention of scapegoating as what allows interpersonal feedback to function therapeutically rather than destructively within the group.
, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, 2008supporting
in many civilizations religious rituals tend to make a group aware of its own shadow… There is here probably the vague idea that another side should also be brought into the open. It is a shadow catharsis festival.
Von Franz situates ritual scapegoating within a broader history of collective shadow-catharsis festivals, distinguishing cultures that consciously enacted shadow exposure from those that suppressed it.
, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales, 1974supporting
Scapegoating, 13, 14–15, 249
Schwartz’s IFS framework explicitly indexes scapegoating as a systemic dynamic relevant to family systems, linking it to the exiling of particular parts within both internal and external systems.
, Internal Family Systems Therapy, 1995supporting
some poor victim is bought every year as a purificatory sacrifice, katharsion; he is fed royally and then on a certain day is led through the city gates, made to walk round the city walls, and finally chased across the boundaries with stones.
Burkert documents the pharmakos ritual as the historical and anthropological prototype of scapegoating, in which a designated victim absorbs communal pollution and is expelled to restore collective purity.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting
Never was a man better qualified for the role of Jonah than the killer of whom society would like, but is unable, to rid itself; against whom, in addition, it is probably believed that the dead man is angry too.
Adkins traces the Greek concept of pollution to a proto-scapegoating logic in which social disaster is attributed to the contaminating presence of a designated guilty party the community cannot otherwise expel.
, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values, 1960supporting
S. Scheidlinger, “Presidential Address: On Scapegoating in Group Psychotherapy,” International Journal of Group Psychoth
A bibliographic citation signals the existence of a dedicated clinical literature on scapegoating within group psychotherapy, anchoring Yalom’s discussion in established group-analytic scholarship.
, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, 2008aside
for all created things there is needed not only a creator, but a piece of life, life itself, which is somehow withdrawn from its proper destiny of death and fixed in an intransient existence.
Rank’s analysis of sacrificial logic in artistic creation gestures toward the scapegoat archetype as the primitive template for all acts in which one party’s destruction is thought to animate or purify the collective.
, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932aside