© illustration by Lise Winne
I think the DARVO tactic is a very important abusive tactic to know about for any survivor who is suffering from abuse, or has suffered from abuse. And in a way it is precursor to some other posts I'm getting ready to publish, namely some of the head games narcissists use and why they can't hear, and refuse to hear, why you are hurt.
The DARVO tactic was introduced by Jennifer J. Freyd, a professional psychologist at the University of Oregon.
It translates into "Deny. Attack. Reverse victim and offender." It is a method that narcissists and both primary psychopaths and secondary psychopaths use. Some addicts and alcoholics use it too. Most criminals definitely use it.
It is a common form of gaslighting, and it is rare for most of us to use it, although some narcissists accuse us of using it (perhaps because they feel so free to use it in any number of circumstances: projection is their game because they are highly resistant to self reflection and feelings of self-shame, preferring to blame and shame others instead).
So what are some examples of the DARVO method? Here are some:
* You accuse a co-worker of stealing your work, ideas, writing or design on a project and presenting them to the boss as their own. Your narcissistic co-worker denies they ever did that, attacks you (often telling you that you are crazy, and that you need to apologize to them for insinuating that they are a thief), and then tells the boss that they are the victim of you (that you tried to steal their work instead of the other way around).
* A narcissistic parent abandons you (this is very common for narcissistic parents to do to at least one child, usually the scapegoat child). Then they tell all of your mutual family members that you discarded them instead. You may have walked away and pursued your life goals because they discarded you, but they make no mention of that, and they play the victim of a cruel abandonment by you instead. When you confront them as to why they are turning this situation around and making themselves out to be a victim, they deny that they ever stopped speaking to you, and then they attack you (often telling you that you are crazy for thinking that way, that you are cruel for "letting them go", that now that you have proven that you are cruel, they no longer want to have anything to do with you - it is a way for them to get away with abandonment a second time).
This is extremely common for family scapegoats to endure, and part of every day life when dealing with a narcissistic parent.
For children, this is extremely damaging and it is classified as a severe form of child abuse and child neglect.
* Two political opponents are trying to get votes. One politician (politician A) runs smear campaigns on the other politician (politician B), making up stories out of thin air about politician B, making him out to be a baby killer, someone who will take away guns from citizens, someone who is out to take over the government and obtain absolute power. Then politician A gets into an accident (gets bruised up) and decides to use it to create a false narrative: that politician B beat them up. Politician B reacts to the false narrative (of course), asking why Politician A is spreading lies.
Politician A responds with shock that Politician B would ever accuse A of spreading lies. He denies that he spreads lies ("Who do you take me to be?"), and then attacks politician B ("You are so immoral for telling someone like me that I spread lies! What a cheap underhanded move!"), and then plays the victim by turning the situation around: "Politician B is spreading lies about me, making it seem I spread lies about him. How dare he tell me that I'm a liar! What a daring move of projection!"
If there is no investigation, or investigative reporting, the liar and smear campaigner (Politician A) will probably beat the honest politician (Politician B). The reason why is that most of the population does not use this tactic. Most people are honest, and adhere to honesty, because dishonesty can have many adverse consequences (such as a fall from social grace), so they assume that Politician A is telling the truth about Politician B, and they assume Politician A was needlessly and un-provokingly attacked by Politician B (this is especially true if they are loyal to a particular political party).
Unless people are aware of narcissism, and the DARVO tactic, they won't suspect Politician A of using this method.
If you are aware of narcissistic tactics, and that politicians tend to act this way, it is because narcissists and psychopaths tend to be attracted to running for office (politics is about "power, control, and domination" after all, something that narcissists and psychopaths like to do to business partners, bill collectors, family members, etc, etc, so "why not try it on a whole city, county, state, nation?", they think).
* DARVO can also happen to you when you are questioning a narcissist's or psychopath's motives, and when they assume a role of teacher. Teaching full adults "behavior lessons" as a way to take the focus off of their own behaviors, is very common for narcissists, and it can be common for psychopaths too if you are in a close personal relationship with them.
* As I've stated, alcoholics can use it to take the focus off of their drinking alcohol. Let's say that your husband tried to make out with all of the women at a party in a drunken state, then sprawled out on a couch and fell asleep, and that it was hard to load him into the car and out of the car after the party ended because he could barely stand up straight.
The next morning you tell him how upset you were by his behavior and his drunken state.
He denies that he was drunk and denies trying to make out with any women.
You tell him that his alcohol habit is impacting your social life together. And that he doesn't remember things he has done.
He tells you that it isn't that bad, and that you are making "a mountain out of a molehill".
But you press him on the issue that he needs to drink less at parties and social events you attend together.
He becomes enraged and tells you that he doesn't have a problem with alcohol, and to lay off already, that you are a "shrew" and "a bitch" for continuing with this subject (attacks you verbally).
You become hurt by the verbal abuse and he tells you that "you brought on yourself" for complaining about his drinking. In fact, he says "I don't deserve this treatment! You need to apologize to me now!" (reverse victim and offender).
* And I have also said that criminals use it:
For instance, you are a musician and forgot to lock the car each time you were unloading for a performance. One of your instruments goes missing. The evening news puts the theft of your instrument on the air.
Someone "snitches" and the offender is arrested.
The offender tells the police that he did not take the guitar, but that the musician loaned him the guitar (denial).
However, when the musician tells police that he did not loan his guitar to the offender, that he doesn't even know the offender, he brings up the fact that he was bringing instruments into a venue that he was to perform at, and why would he lend out a guitar in such a situation when he had to start playing it in an hour for the performance.
Anyway, the issue goes back and forth, and the offender shouts, "What a liar! You lent me that guitar and you know it! And you did it, apparently, just to see me get arrested!" (the attack, plus reversing victim and offender in one sentence).
One of the more dire forms of victimization of using the DARVO tactic:
* A narcissistic sibling punches you in your bedroom. No one else is in your bedroom except you and your sibling. You tell your narcissistic parent that your sibling punched you, but narcissists don't care about the truth, or tell the truth, so without investigating anything, they make an impulsive determination and they tell you that you hurt your sibling instead.
Note: a narcissistic parent will "protect" their favorite child (the golden child) from fall-out, even if there is a possibility that the sibling is violent. That is because narcissistic parents are more invested in "nothing is my fault" and "I get off clean", rather than displaying good parenting.
So the violence is never addressed.
Then this golden child will also deny that he hit you. But then he is also likely to attack you ("Mom always sticks up for me! She would never listen to you! She would never take your side! And how dare you talk to her about me! I'll teach you to never tattle on me again! I'm going to take her away from you completely if you don't watch it, and you're going to pay dearly for tattling on me! Never think you can ever tattle on me again!!")
Then, to drive a further wedge between your parent and you, they are telling constant lies about being victimized by you, while they are, in fact, escalating the violence towards you.
The parent is not likely to intervene at any point. That is because narcissists severely lack empathy, and have agendas of their own - usually to keep you in the scapegoat role.
Eventually a whole family can be using these tactics, especially if they are shown how to do it, especially if they see no consequences for doing it, and they have an impressionable mind (children who grow up seeing the parent use it, and anyone much more bonded to the narcissistic parent than they are to you).
A scapegoat is actually safest with the narcissistic parent than all of the people around them (but only in the one-on-one sense of the word), but parents who scapegoat rarely allow one-on-one discussions between themselves and the scapegoat.
However a narcissistic parent may very well want to "keep" a scapegoat child in the family, at least in terms of continual trauma bonding via scapegoating, but the folks around that parent will mostly want the scapegoat entirely out of the picture (usually).
Many psychologists talk about how the scapegoat is the "lucky one" who will escape the family and keep it from going into more generations. Scapegoats are for sure, aware of the downfalls, the unethical, and highly immoral aspects of narcissism, enough to make positive changes in their own lives and children's lives. But scapegoating is also extremely, extremely dangerous, and I'm not convinced the dangers ever really subside entirely, even when they are old, and if anything escalate to extreme levels (where crimes are committed against the scapegoat - that is what I have seen in forums).
Societal scapegoating is very dangerous (imagine what the Ku Klux Klan would do to one individual with a different racial background than theirs alone in their midst). Scapegoats of families are often just one child and that child may be disabled in some way, or suffering from trauma, or kept from forming relationships with other family (because the narcissist tells other family members that their child is crazy which is another added gaslighting tactic).
When you see a lot of estrangement in one family, and the trend is some kind of prejudice: females being estranged, or members who are showing a different race being estranged, or members who are not in the dominant political party of the family being ostracized, it invariably has to do with scapegoating. Scapegoating is a family disease, just as any form of abuse is.
Some of the things that happen to scapegoats:
* mob bullying
* suicide (from on-going trauma related issues due to the mob bullying), or suicidal thoughts
* getting injured by someone in the group
* being murdered by someone in the group
* being ex-communicated from the family
* being disinherited
* constantly being shamed over erroneous micro events or even made up situations
* being used by other human predators who sense vulnerability
* severe PTSD symptoms
* double standards: where the scapegoat is not allowed to make even one complaint about how they are treated by the co-bullies, but where the co-bullies can criticize ad-nauseum, insult, deride, reject, often steal from, threaten and injure the scapegoat.
Most scapegoats go through all of this and more. The exception may be murder (but even there they can be victims, or threatened, especially if they are receiving any kind of physical abuse or threats of physical abuse, false imprisonment or threats of false imprisonment, or other kinds of threats especially around an inheritance or money - but there are others: I discuss murder and injury in the family as it relates to this subject at the bottom of this section).
So scapegoats are very unlucky in the sense of being saddled with all of this. If they get out at an early age, and stay out, they can be lucky, but most often they are drawn back in with love bombing by some family member who may be "the new scapegoat" and wants it to go back to "the old scapegoat" - you, or by the parent (a "successful, happy, healed scapegoat" is extremely challenging for them in terms of keeping the scapegoat in the continuous role and convincing the scapegoat that the role is all that they deserve in life).
The DARVO tactic is also used by every co-bully in the family on the scapegoat to disenfranchise him or her more and more, to get them out of the family. They talk the parent into false narratives about that scapegoat, while at the same time threaten the scapegoat (usually covertly, rather than overtly). It can become so tangled, where one manipulator tries to out-manipulate another manipulator in the family to get certain actions taken against the scapegoat. It seems to work: the parent will refuse to hear the scapegoat out, and only listen to DARVO explanations of what happened by the co-bullies.
One of the reasons the scapegoat ends up with such a high probability of injury, death, and other dangerous outcomes has to do with the narcissistic parent's recruitment of the co-bullies in the first place. Even brainwashed empaths can help to further the estrangement between child and parent. The parent will also often tell you that in order to talk to you that they need their co-bullies present to protect themselves (which is another DARVO move). If they need to talk to you with bullies present, it always means they want to bully you and scapegoat you some more - that should be obvious.
Scapegoating is abuse, and it happens to be one of the more egregious forms of abuse, especially if it is done to a child, and continued throughout the child's adult life, which it usually is unless there is continual estrangement, otherwise it will escalate. Important to know ...
At any rate, they lose their scapegoats because, like the one person of a different race in and among a Ku Klux Klan rally, it is a dangerous mob situation that the scapegoat must get out of.
threats, murder, injury for scapegoats
This is why it is important for scapegoats who aren't discarded by their families, to get out of the family themselves. Again abuse escalates, and if the family is rejecting, cruel, breaking laws, physically abusive or threatening physical violence, perpetrating false imprisonment or threatening false imprisonment, touching you on the face, neck, or head in an aggressive way, stalking you, getting others to stalk you, trying to isolate you (dis-invites to family events, the unsuspecting family members getting a brainwashing and believing the narcissists in the family), telling you that you are a waste (one of the verbal abuses that point to danger), and if they are they are spiteful or planning revenges, there is no question that you must find a way out of your family (domestic violence centers have the wherewithal to devise a good safety plan for you to escape). If they are doing some or all of these acts in conjunction with the DARVO tactic, and if some or all of the abusive family members are using it (usually all of them will), it is especially critical.
It is also really important to keep a record with police of aggressive texts, e-mails or any kind of recorded evidence in case something happens to you. It is also good to share these same texts, and other recorded evidence with people you can trust like therapists, very close friends, and therapy groups, so that they can vouch for you when your family perpetrates abuse or crimes. Talking to a lawyer may also be advised by police or domestic violence services.
To get help if you are a family scapegoat:
National Domestic Violence Hotline
Find the domestic violence center in your area
This can save your life.
Most of all, the DARVO tactic is good to know about to avoid narcissists and psychopaths altogether (who tend to be predatory of others), so that you can start backing away when you first see it.
DARVO: Understanding a gaslighting strategy of reversing blame - by Dan Drake, LMFT, LPCC, CCPS-S, CSAT-S for Banyan Therapy Group
How Narcissists Use DARVO to Escape Accountability - by Manya Wakefield for Narcissistic Abuse Rehab (NAR)
DARVO Tactics: How Narcissists Resort To Playing The Victim - by Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT for Mind Journal
What is DARVO in a relationship? - by Rebecca Ray for Ray Family Therapy
What Is DARVO Relationship and how Can It Be Resisted? - by Jenni Jacobsen, Licensed Clinical Social Worker for Marriage.com
How DARVO could prove which of us is telling the truth - Nyssa McCanmore for Nyssa's Hobit Hole (her own website)
recommended: What is DARVO - by Jennifer J. Freyd for the University of Oregon
Note: Jennifer J. Freyd was the psychologist who first introduced the tactic, and she has a lot of links where this method was used in public criminal cases (as well as other links of interest).
Some of my own posts that may be relevant to this discussion
Blame-shifting
Gaslighting
Lack of Empathy
"You Brought This Upon Yourself Phrase"
Anyway, it was nice to get that e-mail, and to know that people care about this subject.
