The PVR Triangle

The Boil-Down: There is a well-known silent film in which a villainous landlord demands rent from a damsel who cannot pay. She is eventually saved by the gentleman hero who foils the landlord's fiendish plot. What plays out on the screen is the subject of three different kinds of human fantasies: that of those whose dreams are to control or harm another; to save someone in distress; or to be rescued. This film's melodrama illustrates an interpersonal dynamic referred to here as the perpetrator-victim-rescuer (PVR) triangle.

The Details: When a person asserts self-centered power enough to harm the other member of a dyad or another member of the group (even by consistently getting her needs met at the expense the other or others), the resulting narcissistic gravity asserts a triangular dynamic. The member abusing power is labeled the perpetrator. The person most directly harmed by this gravity is identified as the victim. The member most eligible to have taken steps against the perpetrator's actions (but who, in cases of trauma, does not try to or manage to save the victim from the perpetrator's actions, sometimes instead actively enabling the perpetrator's actions) is called the (absent) rescuer. In groups with members of more than three, diagrams could be drawn with multiple triangles to illustrate which of the three roles each person might assume in the dynamic, and any given person could assume each role in different triangles. (One person's victim might be another person's perpetrator, and so on.) For purposes of this project, the above phenomenon will be referred to as the PVR triangle.

A quick perusal of internet links on the subject might suggest that popular thought has come to associate the PVR triangle with light toxic drama, initiated by a person assuming a "victim stance" for the sake of attention. Such diagrams and articles sometimes seem not to assign power on the triangle where it belongs; nor do they seem to take the trauma associated with it (whether the trauma precipitated the triangle or resulted from it) seriously. During certain traumatic reenactments in social space, such triangulation could well have been initiated by an attention-seeking victim. However, this project's assumption is that the origin of perpetrator-victim-rescuer triangulation in any individual's life began with the only player powerful enough to create triangulation: the perpetrator. (In many circumstances the word "persecutor" appears instead of "perpetrator"; in this blog, the latter term will be used.) While recovery from trauma focuses on the victim's experience of triangulation, it is paramount to assign responsibility to the person(s) who entangled others in traumatic triangulation in the first place. In the healthiest, most effective point of view (according to trauma theory and based upon my twenty-six years as a therapist), that is the perpetrator. To assume otherwise automatically places the "assumer" on the triangle, in the position of absent rescuer.

The PVR triangle is one of the single most useful tools for troubleshooting problems in virtually any social space. If an intimate relationship, a corporate team, a coaching staff, a political committee, or a church board of elders is not functioning effectively, use of the integrated concepts in the PVR triangle can quickly identify or rule out interpersonal pathology contributing to the problem. Unfortunately, the far more popular and widely accepted method of "solving" human system problems (unwritten and often flying under the radar of an organization's policy and procedure manual) is that of social politics, which heavily employ PVR-triangular dynamics and tend to abuse the power of narcissistic gravity.

Awareness of toxic triangulation, and making policies designed to prevent or resolve it, would markedly improve organizational health in any corporation large or small. Such awareness is helpful in improving the interactions of family members as well. But healthy awareness of this kind also makes us think about realities that many people have spent their lives avoiding. I have consulted with organizations desperate to resolve coworker conflicts, only to watch them actively decide to regress into the problem once I spelled out healthy solutions for them. In particular, when a manager or administrator seeks advice about an organizational problem, and my answer to their detailed description involves their need to change, the manager or administrator will often decide to shelve my advice, and instead label and replace a scapegoat employee. This does not resolve the problem; instead, it keeps the organization "on the triangle," and the narcissistic gravity therein continues to keep the organization's "players" in positions of perpetrators, victims, and absent rescuers.

What You Can Do: Practice identifying the Perpetrator-Victim-Rescuer triangle in real and fictional scenarios around you. The next time you watch a movie or become aware of a conflict at work, try to identify which characters or players occupy the corners of a PVR triangle. If you discuss it with other people using this template, you might observe that they see the actors within the triangle differently than you do. People who aim to live their lives off the triangle (and therefore away from its narcissistic gravity) will protect themselves from toxic interactions, improve their health, and improve the effectiveness of their decision-making and support.

*The concept of the PVR triangle and other concepts will be used in the Eyes Wide Open project to help the reader to identify the impact of previously "invisible" forces upon individuals and groups, see past related human tactics, and gain a more effective understanding of events in the family, the government and other institutions, in the media and in politics.