Victim personality traits in old age

Budyakova Tatyana Petrovna ORCID: 0000-0003-1739-837X PhD in Psychology Professor, Department of Psychology and Psychophysiology, Bunin Yelets State University 399770, Russia, Lipetsk region, Yelets, Kommunarov str., 28 budyakovaelez@mail.ru Other publications by this author

In the Russian psychological literature, a surge of interest in the study of the problems of the elderly occurred in connection with the pension reform in Russia in 2018 ^{[2; 4)]}. The practical relevance of such studies was explained by the real increase in stress factors among pre-retirees who counted on other life scenarios, but actually experienced frustration due to the collapse of both tactical and strategic life plans. A similar situation has developed in world science and in the social practice of other countries. So, for example, most studies of pension stress are to some extent due to the facts of changes in national legislation towards an increase in the retirement age ^{[26; 31]}.

Nevertheless, the phenomenon of retirement stress has its own fundamental age-related properties, regardless of legal decisions. High-quality psychological assistance and self-help, protection and self-defense in old age depends on understanding the essence of the underlying stress factors during the transition to retirement age. At the same time, in our opinion, the determinants of pension stress having a victimological nature are clearly underestimated in the literature^[1].

Traditionally, in victimology (the doctrine of the victim), older people are considered as a more vulnerable category of potential victims due to the presence of a special age factor that makes an elderly person more victimized to negative influences, in particular, the criminal environment ^[1]. A special victimization of elderly people in the family has been established, they often become victims of family violence ^[24]. Even elderly criminals serving prison sentences are, in a victimological sense, particularly vulnerable victims. In this regard, a special right of an elderly criminal to safe conditions of detention is postulated ^[27]. The specificity of old age makes it possible to study a person living in it in a broad victimological context, as the most vulnerable to various adverse aspects of the social environment, and not only criminal factors.

The key term "victim" in victimology is revealed through the category of harm caused to the victim: physical, social, property and moral. At the same time, moral harm, defined by the domestic legislator and most foreign national legislations as physical and moral suffering, is not only an independent type of harm, but also a consequence of other types of harm [5)]. The definition of moral harm through the category of suffering has made it possible since the 19th century to call it psychological harm in the doctrinal legal literature ^[3]. Hence, it is quite logical that suffering as a basic psychological category was originally stated in legal and psychological studies in order to create a theoretical basis for the practice of conducting a forensic psychological examination to assess the degree and nature of the suffering (moral harm) caused to the victim of an offense ^[15].

Psychological studies have further shown that stress, especially chronic stress, is also a form of human suffering ^[28]. This made it possible to consider the category of "suffering" as an analogue of stress reactions, which, in turn, made it possible to more accurately determine the psychological nature of the phenomenon of suffering ^[5].

The concept of suffering has become a key one in the development of the victimological concept of the victim's personality. The victim's personality is defined in victimology as a person in whose personality structure there is a victim complex that accumulates the victim's suffering after harming her and is actually the core of her stress states. The victim complex itself includes complexes of inferiority, personality pattern, guilt and lost authority that arose as products of the offense ^[5]. At the same time, the essence of the suffering of an elderly person in the position of a victim has not been practically studied.

The problems of the elderly are currently being considered in the context of security psychology. However, without understanding the personality characteristics of an elderly person as a potential or real victim with its special victimological components, it is impossible to describe specific mechanisms for ensuring psychological safety. Because of this, security psychology also uses the victim category ^{[6; 9]}, which makes it even more relevant to search for specific victimological signs of an elderly person's personality.

Psychological studies have identified some personal changes in retirement that have victimological roots, since they form a victim complex. In particular, we are talking about changing important professional and business statuses for a person, changing the usual rhythm of life, narrowing the social circle of communication, reducing access to various resources, changes in income, etc. All this causes a decrease in self-esteem ^[22], that is, it creates the ground for victimization of an elderly person, and the suffering caused by these factors forms an inferiority complex, which is part of the victim complex ^[5].

The scientific literature also highlights the physiological consequences of retirement stress: the risk of cardiovascular diseases, obesity and impaired cognitive functions ^[21], however, they do not consider the physiological correlates of stress as a victimological product, although physiological reactions are, in fact, physical suffering.

A large number of works are devoted to the problem of continuing to work after retirement and the impact of this factor on psychological health, on reducing stress and accumulated suffering, both physical and moral. Thus, it is noted that the continuation of a working career already in the status of a pensioner among representatives of pedagogical and creative professions directly determines their psychological well-being ^[19]. Work activity in an area where organization and control are required even helps to reduce the risks of dementia ^[30], and generally performs a protective function in terms of combating loneliness and stress caused by it ^[23]. However, there are works with the opposite conclusion that it is working pensioners who are the most vulnerable category of the population due to fear of losing their jobs and therefore have the highest stress level ^[11]. The ambivalence of the data obtained indicates the "blurring" of the criteria for assessing retirement stress.

The line of these studies also described the suffering of an elderly person due to the fear of losing the meaning of life, which was a certain profession before retirement age ^[19]. This part of the research takes place within the framework of a discussion about the social and personal meanings of retirement and contains a direct victimological context, since, for example, in Finland and Japan there is a tendency to marginalize and humiliate those who do not work or do not master new socially significant competencies in old age ^[25].

At the same time, studies show that work activity in the retirement period should be dosed ^[29], otherwise such a victimological factor as physical harm to health and associated physical suffering begins to manifest itself.

The term gerontological ageism has become entrenched in the scientific literature, defined as a degrading attitude towards elderly and senile people ^[8], that is, in fact, this phenomenon has a victimological nature. It is caused, in particular, by social stereotypes, which, acting indirectly and often unconsciously, cause suffering to an elderly person, forming in him a sense of humiliation, and as a result – the position of the victim.

Summarizing, it can be argued that the study of victimological aspects of old age has scientific relevance. In particular, it is relevant to study the victim characteristics of the personality of older people, without understanding the essence of which it is difficult to provide them with effective psychological assistance.

Traditionally, the term "victimization" is used in domestic victimology. It was introduced into scientific circulation by the founder of Russian victimology L.V. Frank. At the same time, L.V. Frank, being a lawyer, introducing, in fact, a psychological category, gave it a generalized definition as a person's ability to become a victim in certain circumstances ^[18]. In general, this version of the definition has been preserved to this day. Thus, A.L. Repetskaya and V.Ya. Rybalskaya understand victimization as "a certain set of stable typical social and (or) psychological (less often physiological) personality traits that, in principle, can be corrected up to their complete neutralization (elimination) and which, in interaction with external circumstances, cause an increased "ability" of a person to become a victim of a crime" ^[14]. At the same time, neither the above nor other studies practically reveal which specific psychological properties of a person cause victimization.

The purpose of this study is to identify and describe the victim characteristics of the personality of an elderly person in pre-retirees, working and non-working pensioners.

Research methodology

Research methods: a) an inverse interview; b) a biographical interview.

Methods of processing research results: the method of descriptive statistics and content analysis.

Materials of the methods.

The author's inverse interview was used as the first research method. The pre–retirement study participants had to imagine that they had already reached retirement age and they needed to predict their life in the new status of a pensioner. During the interview, only negative signs of retirement status were recorded, which caused anxiety among the respondents.

Inverse Interview Questions

Imagine that you will retire in a month.

1. What can change for the worse in retirement and cause stress?

2. Will you be proud or ashamed of your retirement status? Why?

A biographical interview has a greater scientific value than the usual types of interviews, since it involves confirming one's position with facts from one's own biography.

Questions of a biographical interview with working pensioners

1. Why did you continue working after retirement?

2. What has changed for the worse when obtaining the status of a working pensioner and causes stressful experiences?

Questions of a biographical interview with unemployed pensioners

1. What has changed for the worse after retirement and leaving work and causes stressful experiences?

2. Are you proud or embarrassed of your status as a non-working pensioner?

Sample: 120 people participated in the study, 40 people in each status group (pre-retirees, working pensioners, non-working pensioners).

Research hypothesis: victimized personality traits should be considered a victimized life position and victim attitudes. At the same time, the content of both the victim's life position and victim attitudes is determined by the social status: a pre-pensioner, a working or non-working pensioner.

Results

In our analysis, we used the victimological category of harm, when the deterioration of any kind of well–being: physical, social or psychological - is recognized as harmful and provokes suffering. Victimology describes four types of harm suffered by the victim: physical, property, social and moral. The aim of the study was to describe the content of these types of harm when its causes are associated with a change in social status in old age: a pre-pensioner, a working and a non-working pensioner. We proceeded from the fact that, in general, it is the awareness of suffering harm that forms a victimized social position in old age.

Table 1 below summarizes the generalized judgments of the participants in our study about the harmful consequences of retirement that can cause suffering.

Table 1

The approximate content of different types of harm

elderly people have different status

Awareness of objective material losses (property damage) in connection with retirement forms a victimized life position based on experiences due to a decrease in the level of material protection and security. At the same time, the content of the victim position of an elderly person, as our data show, depends on his status. Thus, pre-retirees suffer from the fact of delayed retirement due to changes in retirement dates, perceiving this as a lost benefit. Working pensioners worry about the lack of pension indexation, considering this circumstance as invaluable work, and non-working people worry about a decrease in income, considering it as material damage. However, all respondents, regardless of their status, were fixed in the position of the victim.

The facts of physical aging of the body (physical harm) also cause the formation of a victimized social position, in particular, due to a decrease in the protective properties of the body, caused, among other things, by the fear of losing a job before retirement for pre-retirees or the physical suffering of unemployed pensioners due to a violation of the usual lifestyle, which previously included work.

For psychological research, the most significant are social and moral types of harm, since they are psychological in nature and, in principle, cause other types of harm: property and physical.

Thus, one of the types of harm caused to the victim is considered social harm. Social harm in victimology is recognized as harm in the form of violation of the rights and legitimate interests of the victim when, for objective reasons, she cannot experience physical or moral suffering like other persons in the same circumstances. For example, when insulted, an infant does not suffer from humiliation, since he does not understand the meaning of words that detract from his dignity, although he has the right to honor and dignity from the moment of birth ^[5].

At the same time, the content of social harm in relation to an elderly victim has not been studied. Our research has shown that this type of harm in the situation of an elderly person is characterized by the fact that the social environment does not always realize that it causes suffering to the victim, since it does not perceive its actions or inactions as harmful. During the biographical interview, markers of social harm in various events of private life were identified. For example, a marker of social harm appeared in a life situation when a man, passing by the elderly who were playing sports in the park and invited him to join their classes, uttered a phrase that humiliated them: "I'm only 50 years old, let the old people do it here." At the same time, the man, as it turned out, did not want to humiliate anyone, he really wanted to increase his self-esteem: "I'm not like you, I'm better," believing at the same time that older people should not be offended by mentions of their lower social importance. Thus, the essence of social harm in an elderly situation is humiliation, based on the image of a representative of the silver age as infirm, a burden, and at the same time, such an attitude is based not on personal hostility, but on social stereotypes.

Unemployed pensioners turned out to be the most sensitive to social harm, since they have more options to appear in a weak victim position (12 markers, see: diagram 1). Thus, social harm is implicitly contained in manifestations of ageism, when social workers or medical staff humiliate the victim, not considering their actions (inaction) humiliating. For example, in one biographical memoir, a study participant said that his arm was forcibly tied to a hospital bed so that he could not remove the needle from the IV system. At the same time, the staff motivated their actions by the benefits for the patient. Another option for social harm was, for example, the requirement to skip the queue for the mother of a disabled child in a queue at a social protection institution when only unemployed pensioners were present. The argument was humiliating for the elderly: "the child is more important than all of you put together." Some of the study participants were particularly impressed by a case in Canada, replicated on the Internet, when an elderly person was offered a euthanasia service instead of help, since the respondents identified themselves with this person. In general, this shows that the social harm suffered by pensioners is based on social stereotypes that dominate both in Russian society and in other countries ^{[16; 17]}.

The least social harm was expressed in working pensioners – 6 markers (see: Diagram 1). At the same time, it had a slightly different content. In addition to resentments at emphasizing their advanced age, which did not reach the limits of stress, working pensioners experienced real stressful suffering due to discrimination at work when they were offered to do work of greater intensity than other workers. They believed that they had already gone through the path of intensive work in their youth and deserved not to be overloaded during the retirement period. At the same time, the head was guided by the rule: "If you can't work, leave!"

Figure 1

Severity of social harm

Among pre-retirees, the social harm was formally slightly more pronounced compared to working pensioners (8 markers). Their suffering was further conditioned by a sense of injustice from the fact that, despite the fact that their status allowed them to demand an equal right to work, they were reminded that they were older workers and less needed by the employer. Some of them additionally experienced social harm in situations where, for example, pre-retirees were denied the right to professional development at the expense of the employer, appealing to the economic inefficiency of such a measure. At the same time, research shows that the need for additional education or even obtaining a new profession is more conscious and pragmatic among older students ^[12].

The moral harm suffered by an elderly person in the context of his retirement or pre-retirement status is revealed in the form of personal complexes, which together make up the "victim complex" ^[5].

Comparing the content of personality complexes in elderly people of different status is important for determining the directions of psychological work on their correction. The results of this comparison are presented in Table 2.

Table 2

The content of personal complexes (moral harm)

elderly people have different status

As can be seen from Table 2, the content of various personality complexes as a whole consists of victim attitudes. Thus, the victimization attitude became the content of the inferiority complex among pre-retirees: "I am worse than others, because I am in old age, and they do not see me as a promising employee." The content of the complex of the personal sample of unemployed pensioners were such attitudes as: "I am not like others, I am old, I have wrinkles, I will never be the same as I was in my youth and maturity"; "I will never be interesting to any employer"; "I will never implement plans anymore and the desire for youth and maturity due to age restrictions." The complex of lost authority manifested itself among working pensioners in the general victim attitude: "I am the first to be fired, regardless of my labor and professional abilities, because it is necessary to make room for young workers." The guilt complex of unemployed pensioners is fixed in the very awareness of guilt for having to ask other people for help.

The peculiarity of the victim complex in the elderly, compared with the typical content of this complex in victims of offenses, was the discovery of a superiority complex in its structure. A typical installation of this complex for all categories of elderly people has become a victim attitude – "Everyone owes me!".

Discussion of the results

In our study, we identified markers of personality complexes in older people. The superiority complex of non-working pensioners manifested itself in such markers as: "constant memories of time devoted to work"; "reassessment of their labor merits"; "joy at the failures of currently working colleagues", "claims of inattention to the current management of the enterprise to the needs of a non-working pensioner", "constant criticism of the former management" and other Markers of the complex the inferiority of unemployed pensioners became factors indicating a decrease in self-esteem, for example, "avoiding communication with former colleagues at work", "the desire to stay at home, embarrassed by their new status", etc. It has already been noted in the literature that unemployed pensioners have some devaluation of their abilities and their lives ^[7], but the markers indicated above indicate the presence of a pronounced affective inferiority complex and, accordingly, a high degree of stress of this factor. At the same time, the common marker of the inferiority complex for all elderly statuses was the ontological question: "Why do I live?" The very actualization of such a question is an indicator of the increased stress of the elderly.

Markers of the personality pattern complex manifested differently in men and women. The complex of a personal pattern is a system of affective feelings about the inability to conform to a certain pattern that a person is guided by. The complex of the personal pattern is described in criminal victimology for cases when the victim, because of the crime committed against her, will never be able to meet the standards of the future developed for herself. Thus, disfigurement of appearance or loss of limbs as a result of serious harm to health permanently deprive the victim of the opportunity to meet certain standards of attractiveness ^[5]. For older people, an objective factor that reduces the chances of matching a personal pattern is the aging process itself as an objective cause that cannot be resisted.

The markers of the personality sample complex are, for example, the facts of the selection of photographs for identity documents. Some female respondents told in a biographical interview that they tried to choose younger photos for a passport or for a screensaver on social networks, not wanting to use their current appearance, refused to communicate on Skype without applying makeup, etc. It was noted in the interview that it became difficult for them to voice their age even to a doctor, some decided on painful procedures to correct their appearance, for example, applying eyebrow tattoos. The same process manifested itself in men, but in a hidden form, they had an obsessive need to confirm their masculine attractiveness in conversations with women, and some tried to dress like boys.

The complex of lost (threatened) authority was first described by Ya. Reikovsky ^[13]. In relation to the elderly, this complex manifests itself as affective experiences due to the humiliation of their professional and personal authority. The general formula of affectively charged thoughts that make up this complex among unemployed pensioners was the following: "I have a lot of experience, I know a lot and can do better than others, but this circumstance is ignored." Markers of the manifestation of this complex among unemployed pensioners were the facts when they performed their professional work for themselves, realizing that their work would not be in demand. Some respondents noted that they sorely lacked professional communication and professional assessment, and suffered that no one turned to them for advice and professional help.

The guilt complex is a paradoxical, but typical victim complex. It consists in the victim's self-blame for what is happening and is often the product of the victim's accusations from people around him. Victim guilt is one of the basic categories of victimology ^[10], and in modern positive victimology it is even used as a method of psychotherapy ^[20]. As our study has shown, in older people this affective complex manifests itself in such affectively charged thoughts as: "I am not guilty (not guilty) that there was an increase in the retirement age" (in pre-retirees) as a defense against external accusations against the requirement to provide a job. For non-working pensioners, this feeling of guilt is that they are often forced to ask other people for help; for working pensioners, this complex manifested itself in feelings caused by accusations from colleagues that they occupy a place that could be occupied by young workers. Due to the stress caused by such accusations, some employees of retirement age who participated in our study even chose to quit, although they valued their work very much and loved their profession. Working pensioners either successfully struggle with affective thoughts of this kind, or they quit. The absence of this complex in a number of our pre-retirement respondents is explained by their counterposition – "It's not my fault (not my fault) that the retirement age was increased."

Conclusions

1. Victimized personality traits include the victimized social position of an elderly person and victim attitudes. The content of both the victim's life position and victim attitudes is determined by the status of an elderly person: a pre-pensioner, a working pensioner and a non-working pensioner.

2. Victim attitudes are fixed in the specific content of affective personality complexes in older people in accordance with their current social status: a pre-pensioner, a working and non-working pensioner.

3. We can talk about the specifics of the content of the victim complex in the elderly. In addition to the typical affective personality complexes that form the victim complex in victims of offenses, a personal affective superiority complex was identified, the content of which is effectively charged thoughts about the superiority of an elderly person over representatives of other ages.

4. Markers of typical personality complexes in old age have been identified: inferiority complex, personality pattern complex, threatened authority complex, superiority complex, guilt complex, which allows them to be successfully diagnosed and further provide substantive psychological assistance.

5. Victimized social life position in old age is a reflection in the consciousness of various types of harm caused to an elderly person as a specific victim: property, physical, social and moral.

6. The specific content of the social harm suffered by the elderly as suffering from humiliation based on the image of a representative of the silver age as an infirm burden was revealed. At the same time, this attitude is based not on personal hostility, but on social stereotypes.

^[1] Victm (Latin) – victim.