ABSTRACT
From nasty little incidents in the nursery playground to the chronic problems of international relations, it seems that the abuse of power and the exploitation of others in the form of bullying is a ubiquitous characteristic of human nature. The word ‘bully’ in the Oxford English Dictionary has an interesting ancestry, which lies in an Old High German word, also found in modern Dutch, boele meaning lover or sweetheart. It is to be found in Shakespeare, where, for example, the much loved King is referred to as ‘my bully boy’ (Henry V Act 4, sc 1: 44) and it still exists in some old seafaring songs. At first this seems to make no sense until we think about the relationships between bullies and victims as forms of attachment based on the coercion and power of one person over another. The person who is ready to be a victim appears to be looking for someone who may make them suffer, just as the bully appears to be seeking out a victim. In this chapter, I argue that both bullies and victims seek to establish and maintain the sort of relationships that they have experienced from their earliest attachments.
