Links on escaping (Houdini-like :-)

From http://www.scapegoat.demon.co.uk/ (bolds mine). Broken into small pieces for easier digestibility:

Scapegoating is a hostile social - psychological discrediting routine by which people move blame and responsibility away from themselves and towards a target person or group.

It is also a practice by which angry feelings and feelings of hostility may be projected, via inappropriate accusation, towards others.

The target feels wrongly persecuted and receives misplaced vilification, blame and criticism;

she is likely to suffer rejection from those who the perpetrator seeks to influence.
[YES! Bingo! dingdingdingdingding - we have a winnah!]

Scapegoating has a wide range of focus: from "approved" enemies of very large groups of people down to the scapegoating of individuals by other individuals. Distortion is always a feature.

In scapegoating, feelings of guilt, aggression, blame and suffering are transferred away from a person or group so as to fulfill an unconscious drive to resolve or avoid such bad feelings.

This is done by the displacement of responsibility and blame to another who serves as a target for blame both for the scapegoater and his supporters.

The scapegoating process can be understood as an example of the Drama Triangle concept [Karpman, 1968].

The perpetrator's drive to displace and transfer responsibility away from himself may not be experienced with full consciousness - self-deception is often a feature.

The target's knowledge that he is being scapegoated builds slowly and follows events.

The scapegoater's target experiences exclusion, ostracism or even expulsion.

In so far as the process is unconscious it is more likely to be denied by the perpetrator.

In such cases, any bad feelings - such as the perpetrator's own shame and guilt - are also likely to be denied.

Scapegoating frees the perpetrator from some self-dissatisfaction and provides some narcissistic gratification to him.

It enables the self-righteous discharge of aggression. Scapegoaters tend to have extra-punitive characteristics.

Scapegoating also can be seen as the perpetrator's defense mechanism against unacceptable emotions such as hostility and guilt.

n Kleinian terms, scapegoating is an example of projective identification, with the primitive intent of splitting: separating the good from the bad.

On another view,

scapegoaters are insecure people driven to raise their own status by lowering the status of their target.