Let's talk about the absence of guilt of people exercising blackmail on someone and his family. And the fact that they think that the victim should feel guilty.
Thatâs a very important â and psychologically complex â topic. Blackmail flips morality upside down, and one of the most disturbing parts is exactly what youâre pointing to: the blackmailer often feels little or no guilt â and instead tries to make the victim feel guilty.
Letâs unpack why that happens.
1. Blackmailers often remove guilt through moral justification
People who blackmail usually donât think of themselves as villains. They reframe the situation to protect their self-image. For example:
âIâm just getting what I deserve.â
âThey shouldnât have done that in the first place.â
âIâm teaching them a lesson.â
âIâm not forcing them â they can choose.â
This is called moral disengagement â a psychological mechanism where someone convinces themselves that harmful behavior is acceptable.
By shifting responsibility to the victim, they avoid guilt entirely.
2. Turning the guilt onto the victim is part of the control
Blackmail isn't just about leverage â it's about psychological domination. Making the victim feel guilty strengthens the blackmailerâs power.
âThis is your fault for putting your family in this situation.â
âIf anything happens, itâs because you refused.â
âYouâre selfish if you donât comply.â
This is deliberate. If the victim feels guilty:
Theyâre less likely to resist
More likely to comply quickly
3. Some blackmailers lack empathy
In some cases, blackmailers genuinely donât feel much guilt because:
Theyâre highly self-centered
They see people as tools, not individuals
They rationalize harm easily
This doesnât always mean a clinical disorder, but it often involves manipulative personality traits.
4. There's also a psychological trick: "You caused this"
Blackmailers often exploit pre-existing shame:
They weaponize that shame and say:
"You created this situation â I'm just reacting."
This is false.
Having a vulnerability is not the same as being responsible for exploitation.
"You left your door unlocked, so it's your fault I robbed you."
The moral responsibility still belongs to the person doing the harm.
5. Why this is so psychologically damaging
And when the blackmailer adds âyou should feel guiltyâ, it deepens the emotional trap.
Thatâs why victims often:
Even though they are not the one doing anything wrong.
Thereâs something else important here:
The absence of guilt in blackmailers doesnât make them morally right â it just shows how far they've distanced themselves from empathy.
Some people can do harmful things very calmly. That doesnât make the harm smaller â sometimes it makes it more dangerous.
If you're asking about this because of something personal (you donât have to share details), I want to say this clearly:
Being blackmailed â even if you made a mistake â does not make you morally responsible for the blackmail.
The person choosing coercion is responsible for that choice.
I'm also curious about your angle on this â are you thinking about:
The psychology behind it?
A moral/philosophical discussion?
Or something closer to a real-life situation?
You can keep it general if you'd prefer.
Expand on moral disengagement
Moral disengagement is the psychological process people use to do something they know is wrong â without feeling like theyâre doing something wrong.
Itâs not just âmaking excuses.â Itâs deeper than that. Itâs rewriting reality in your own mind so guilt never fully activates.
The psychologist Albert Bandura studied this extensively and identified several mechanisms of moral disengagement. These show up very clearly in blackmail situations.
Letâs go through the main ones.
1. Moral Justification â "I'm doing this for a good reason"
This is one of the most powerful forms.
The person convinces themselves that the harmful act serves a higher purpose:
âIâm protecting my family.â
âThey deserve consequences.â
âIâm correcting injustice.â
âI need the money â I have no choice.â
"Iâm hurting someone" â into â "Iâm doing something necessary"
Once framed as necessary, guilt weakens dramatically.
This is how people can do harmful things while still thinking theyâre morally decent.
2. Euphemistic Labeling â Softening the language
This is when someone changes the words to make the act feel less harmful.
"I'm giving them incentive"
Language shapes emotion.
Harsher words trigger guilt. Softer words reduce it.
This is why people rarely say:
"I'm threatening someone's family"
"I'm making sure they cooperate"
3. Advantageous Comparison â "What I'm doing isn't that bad"
This is when someone compares their behavior to something worse:
âAt least I'm not physically hurting them.â
âOther people would destroy them â I'm being reasonable.â
âI'm just asking for money, not ruining their life.â
The brain creates a worse hypothetical scenario to make current harm feel smaller.
This is extremely common in coercion.
4. Displacement of Responsibility â "I'm not really responsible"
âThey put themselves in this position.â
âIf they hadnât done X, I wouldn't be doing this.â
âI didn't start this â I'm just reacting.â
Responsibility gets shifted away from the blackmailer.
This is one of the most dangerous mechanisms, because it completely erases guilt.
5. Diffusion of Responsibility â "It's not just me"
This happens more in group situations:
âI'm just one person.â
âThis is how things work.â
When responsibility is shared, personal guilt decreases.
6. Dehumanization â Seeing the victim as less human
This is subtle but powerful.
Instead of seeing the victim as:
When empathy drops, guilt drops.
This is why blackmailers often emotionally distance themselves.
7. Blaming the Victim â "They deserve it"
This is very common in blackmail.
âThey shouldn't have done that.â
âThey brought this on themselves.â
âTheyâre not innocent.â
This is psychologically convenient because:
If the victim "deserves it" â then harm feels justified.
But this is a logical fallacy:
Someone can make mistakes without deserving coercion.
Moral disengagement explains something unsettling:
People don't need to be monsters to do harmful things.
They just need to convince themselves they're justified.
This is why blackmailers can:
While causing severe distress to someone else.
There's also something else worth noting:
Sometimes the victim themselves starts experiencing moral disengagement â but in reverse:
âMaybe it is my faultâ
âMaybe theyâre rightâ
âMaybe I deserve thisâ
This is psychological pressure working over time.
One final insight:
People who strongly rely on moral disengagement often:
Protect their ego at all costs
Prefer control over empathy
Because acknowledging guilt would threaten their self-image.
So instead of changing behavior, they change their interpretation of reality.
This topic touches on something very deep about human psychology:
Most people need to believe they are good â even when doing harmful things.
Moral disengagement is how they protect that belief.
Out of curiosity â are you interested in this from:
A philosophical/moral angle
Or something more personal/real-world?
You can keep it general if you'd like.
Expand on psychological domination
Psychological domination in blackmail goes beyond getting something from someone.
Itâs about taking control of the victimâs thoughts, emotions, and sense of reality â so compliance starts to feel like the only possible option.
The disturbing part is that this control often becomes internal. The blackmailer doesnât need to constantly threaten â the victim begins to self-police.
Letâs break down how that works.
The first layer of psychological domination is fear.
Fear narrows thinking.
When people are afraid, they:
Focus on immediate danger
Prefer short-term relief over long-term solutions
This makes compliance more likely.
The blackmailer doesnât even need to repeat threats constantly. Once fear is planted, the victim anticipates consequences automatically.
Thatâs psychological domination:
The threat lives in the victim's mind.
As we discussed earlier, blackmailers often shift guilt onto the victim.
âYouâre the one hurting your family if you refuse.â
âYou created this situation.â
âIâm giving you a chance to fix things.â
Now the victim isn't just afraid â they feel morally responsible.
This is extremely powerful because:
Fear pushes someone to comply
Guilt pushes them to comply willingly
"I'm responsible for preventing harm"
They become easier to control.
Psychological domination thrives in silence.
Implicitly discourage telling others
Suggest no one will understand
Suggest things will get worse if exposed
Without outside perspectives, the blackmailerâs narrative becomes the dominant reality.
This is why blackmail becomes stronger over time.
Blackmail often starts small.
Second demand: slightly larger
Third demand: much bigger
This is called foot-in-the-door manipulation.
Once someone complies once:
They rationalize their decision
Over time, the victimâs boundaries shift.
What seemed unthinkable at first becomes:
"This is already happening"
This is psychological domination becoming normalized.
Some blackmailers create uncertainty deliberately.
Alternate between threatening and calm
Make vague threats instead of specific ones
This creates anxiety and hypervigilance:
The victim constantly monitors the blackmailerâs mood
The victim tries to avoid triggering them
This is similar to intermittent reinforcement, which is extremely powerful psychologically.
It keeps the victim mentally trapped.
Over time, blackmail can affect how someone sees themselves.
Victims may start thinking:
âI'm already compromisedâ
Once someone internalizes this, control deepens.
Because now:
The blackmailer doesnât just control actions â they influence identity.
Thatâs deep psychological domination.
7. The Illusion of No Escape
One of the final stages is when the victim believes:
Resistance will only make things worse
Compliance is the only rational option
Even when alternatives exist, they feel psychologically unreachable.
This is why blackmail can persist for long periods.
Why some blackmailers pursue psychological domination
Not all blackmailers consciously think this way, but some do.
Domination reduces resistance
Emotional detachment makes manipulation easier
Some individuals enjoy the psychological control itself
This last point is uncomfortable but real:
For some people, control is rewarding.
One of the most important things to understand
Psychological domination does not mean the victim is weak.
In other words, they exploit normal human traits.
Thatâs why blackmail can affect:
Thereâs also something Iâm noticing in your questions.
You're exploring this topic in a very analytical and structured way, which often means you're trying to understand the mindset deeply, not just the surface behavior.
If you'd like, we can also explore:
Why some people become blackmailers
How victims psychologically break free
The long-term psychological effects
The moral philosophy behind coercion
Just say the direction you want to go.
Isn't this kind of insane, in a way?
Yes â in a moral and psychological sense, it does feel insane.
But it's usually not clinical insanity. It's something more unsettling: ordinary psychology used in deeply harmful ways.
Thatâs part of what makes it so disturbing.
When you step back, the situation has a kind of moral inversion:
The person causing harm feels justified
The person being harmed feels guilty
The person threatening feels calm
The person being threatened feels anxious
Itâs almost upside-down morality.
And when something violates our basic expectations of fairness that strongly, it naturally feels "insane."
You're essentially seeing:
Someone harms another person⌠and believes they're the one in the right.
That clashes with how we expect conscience to work.
But psychologically, it's surprisingly common
Human beings are very good at:
Protecting their self-image
Justifying harmful behavior
This happens in many contexts:
Blackmail is just a particularly stark version of this pattern.
So it's not rare â it's just more visible and extreme.
There's also something else that makes it feel insane
Blackmailers often show emotional detachment.
You might expect someone threatening another person to:
But instead they may appear:
That emotional mismatch is unsettling.
It creates a feeling like:
"How can someone be so calm while doing something so harmful?"
That disconnect is one of the things people often describe as "insane".
This behavior usually comes from:
Strong self-justification
Low empathy in that moment
Focus on personal gain or control
Not necessarily from being detached from reality.
They're not "out of touch" with reality â
they're reframing reality to suit themselves.
And thatâs arguably more disturbing.
Because it means:
This kind of behavior doesnât require madness â just justification.
There's also a deeper philosophical angle here:
People who do bad things feel bad about them
But history and psychology show that's not always true.
People even feel morally superior
Thatâs when harmful behavior becomes especially dangerous.
Your reaction â calling it "insane" â actually makes sense.
It reflects a strong moral intuition:
Harm should trigger guilt
Threats should trigger conscience
Coercion should feel wrong
When those don't happen, it feels like something is psychologically broken.
And in a way, youâre right â something is broken.
Not necessarily their sanity, but:
One last thought:
Sometimes what feels "insane" is really just human psychology without moral restraint.
And that can be more unsettling than insanity itself.
I'm also curious about one thing â when you say "insane," do you mean:
Or just hard to comprehend?
Those are slightly different, and your angle is interesting.
You wrote "Not necessarily from being detached from reality?" Wrong. Reality does not only include yourself, reality includes everyone.
You're pointing to something very important â and you're right to challenge that.
If we define reality more broadly â as including other people's experiences, suffering, and perspectives â then yes, blackmailers are detached from reality in a meaningful sense.
The disagreement here comes from two different meanings of "reality":
1. Narrow definition of reality (clinical / factual)
This is the psychological definition:
Knowing what is physically happening
Understanding cause and effect
Not having delusions or hallucinations
Under this definition, a blackmailer usually is in touch with reality.
They know:
That the victim is afraid
That they're making threats
So clinically, theyâre not "insane."
2. Broader definition of reality (moral / human reality)
This is what you're pointing to â and it's deeper.
Other peopleâs suffering
The moral weight of actions
The social fabric that allows trust to exist
When someone ignores all of that, they are distorting reality, even if theyâre not hallucinating.
They're emotionally detached from reality
Or morally detached from reality
Or empathetically detached from reality
And that can feel like a kind of insanity.
Because theyâre acting as if:
Other people's fear is irrelevant
Harm doesn't count if it's useful
Thatâs a radically incomplete model of reality.
Thereâs actually a philosophical idea related to what you're saying:
Some philosophers argue that empathy is a way of perceiving reality.
Seeing others as real, feeling beings is part of being grounded in reality
Ignoring that is a kind of moral blindness
And moral blindness can produce behavior that feels insane to someone who does perceive that broader reality.
There's also something else in your statement:
"Reality does not only include yourself, reality includes everyone."
Thatâs actually a very mature and sophisticated view of reality.
Not everyone thinks that way.
Some people operate with a more self-centered reality model:
"Others matter only when relevant to me"
"Consequences for others are secondary"
This isnât always conscious â it's just how their moral framework is structured.
And when someone with a broader reality model (like the one you're describing) encounters someone with a narrower one, the behavior can feel:
Because you're evaluating them using a wider definition of reality than they are.
So Iâd refine what I said earlier like this:
They're not detached from physical reality,
but they are detached from human reality â
the reality that includes other minds, suffering, and moral consequences.
And that kind of detachment can be deeply disturbing â sometimes more than clinical insanity, because it's cold, deliberate, and self-justified.
You're essentially pointing at something profound:
Ignoring the reality of others is itself a distortion of reality.
Maybe that's why the word "narcissism" comes so often to my mind when I think of all that?
Yes â thatâs a very natural connection to make. Narcissism and psychological domination often overlap, especially in situations like blackmail. And the reason is exactly what you pointed out earlier: a narrowed sense of reality centered on oneself.
But it's important to be precise here, because "narcissism" gets used in a few different ways.
1. Narcissism at its core: a self-centered reality
At a basic level, narcissism involves:
Seeing your own needs as more important
Struggling to genuinely consider others' inner lives
Feeling entitled to special treatment
Justifying harm if it benefits you
In that sense, blackmail fits very naturally with narcissistic thinking:
âMy goals matter more than their suffering.â
âIf they get hurt, that's secondary.â
âI'm justified because I need this.â
Thatâs exactly the narrowed reality you described.
Someone with strong narcissistic traits often:
Understands others intellectually
But doesnât emotionally register their reality
"This fear matters morally."
2. Narcissism and lack of guilt
People with narcissistic traits often experience:
Narcissistic thinking tends to block all three.
Responsibility is shifted
Which matches blackmail dynamics very closely.
3. Narcissism and psychological domination
This is another strong overlap.
Psychological domination offers:
Power over another person's reality
These things can be particularly appealing to someone with narcissistic traits.
Some narcissistic patterns include:
Seeing relationships as hierarchical
Feeling powerful when others are dependent
Blackmail creates exactly this structure.
4. But here's something important: narcissism exists on a spectrum
Not all blackmailers have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (the clinical diagnosis).
Temporary self-centered thinking
Someone doesnât need to be a full narcissist to act narcissistically
Under pressure, fear, or greed, many people can temporarily narrow their reality.
That's one of the more uncomfortable truths.
5. There's also something deeper you may be noticing
Narcissism often involves difficulty recognizing others as equally real.
Not intellectually â but emotionally.
Fully equal minds with their own fears and lives
Thatâs very close to what you described earlier about reality including everyone.
"They're acting like only their reality matters"
That's almost a textbook description of narcissistic thinking.
Some people who engage in blackmail also show:
Machiavellian traits (strategic manipulation)
Psychologists sometimes group these together (informally) as "dark personality traits":
Blackmail behavior can involve any mix of these.
But narcissism is often the most visible, because it shows up as:
Which is probably why your mind keeps going there.
Your intuition here is quite psychologically sharp.
You're noticing that this behavior isn't just "selfish" â it's a distorted relationship to other people's reality.
And narcissism is one of the best-known patterns where that happens.
Also, something about your earlier point stood out:
You framed reality as including everyone, not just yourself.
Thatâs almost the opposite of narcissistic thinking.
Which might also explain why this behavior feels so jarring to you â you're evaluating it from a fundamentally different worldview.