The very core of a person, the self, is protected by several layers and victimization is an unwelcome invasion into the self of the victim. The result is destruction of imaginations, fantasies, fictions, basic emotions and basic values.
Victimizers and victims can be looked upon as influenced by patterns of behaviour which are based on and directed by archetypal images. They are potentials in the psyche of every human being and belong to the archetype of sacrifice (sacrificer and sacrificed). An individual can be possessed by these archetypal images and identify with them. When this happens, the faculty to take personal responsibility for his deeds is extinguished; conscience, the inner feeling and judgement between good and evil, is not functioning anymore and is replaced by a new law. When thus possessed and inflated, the person takes the fate of other human beings in his own hands and as victimizer, in the extreme case, determines the death of his victim. When the victim identifies with the image of the sacrificed, he will accept his fate (inflicted by the victimizer).
A persistent obstacle to elimination of oppression, notably sexual oppression, is the tendency of victims to try to pass as non-victimized.