The Power Of The Victim’s Perseverance

The concept of perseverance is complex and has many uses. Among these, it is important to emphasize victimology, i.e. victim research. This discipline examines people who have suffered harm as a result of a crime, i.e., victims.

Once we have gone through a traumatic experience, such as being a victim of a crime, it is best to try to find a way to live a normal life. But this is not always easy.

Scientists have studied various methods and processes that help people get over trauma. In other words, they have examined the perseverance of the victims.

What is victimology?

Scholars disagree on what this branch of science is suitable for. Some think it should be part of criminology. Criminology is a larger discipline that studies crimes, perpetrators, and victims, as well as the interactions between the aforementioned parties and the context in which that all takes place. Personally, I support this idea. However, other experts in the subject prefer to treat it as an independent discipline.

What means, however, is that this area of ​​research stems from the need to consider the victim. The victim is an often overlooked topic in the world of crime.

Investigating this topic can prevent crime in the future as well as help victims.

The subject “originates” from the 1973 First International Conference on Victimology in Jerusalem. This event confirmed victimology as a true discipline.

One of its studies is the “victimization process”. This basically means the change that results in someone becoming or thinking of themselves as a victim. There are many factors and causes associated with this phenomenon that determine a person’s reaction, as experiencing a traumatic event is always a personal process and is therefore never the same for everyone. It depends on personal, social and cultural reasons, etc.

The process of helping the victim

Given the importance of perseverance, it is a concept that has not been sufficiently explored. It is based on two key ideas: enduring the event and recovering from it.

Some scientists, such as Janoff-Bulman, created a scale to determine whether a person is persistent or not. The scale consists of phrases or expressions that analyze a person’s self-esteem and ability to face traumatic situations. The person evaluates each sentence on a scale of 1 to 5 based on how strongly he agrees or disagrees with the statement. From this, researchers get a result that they believe is related to a person’s perseverance.

The perseverance of the victims

The victim’s perseverance refers to his or her ability to get over traumatic events, the ability not to let the event negatively affect his or her daily life.

Different experts offer different definitions or perspectives on this topic. Basically, there are two different schools:

• French experts associate the concept with post-traumatic growth . This phenomenon examines or analyzes the possibility of learning and growing from adversity.

This could be summed up as the phrase “learn to age all”. It would basically be about finding something positive about a negative thing and taking advantage of a negative thing.

• U.S. experts associate the concept with the survival process. Rather, they define it as a person’s return to a previous life.

Victims can develop perseverance; it is an ability that arises from a dynamic process. Researchers have looked at its “source” and possible factors that contribute to perseverance.

Some personality traits contribute to the development of perseverance, as do certain characteristics of the environment. However, the most important factor is our perception of ourselves. The more positive that perception is, the greater the ability we have to persevere.

By no means does this mean that only persistent people could get over a traumatic event. But perseverance helps. For this reason, it is important to continue exploring this particular topic.

We need to know what all the factors are developing perseverance. In this way, we can find ways to promote it and help victims of traumatic events overcome them with the least possible suffering.