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The Psychology of Bullies: Lessons for Facing Them

On understanding the anthropological perspective of bullying and how to handle it

Mentalcodex | Julfi
3 min readJul 31, 2023
Artist: Gustave Courbet

Bullies never go away. They’ve just evolved into a more insidious form as you grow older.

It’s easy to condemn them. But it’s missing out on the lessons they teach us about our nature.

Today, let’s explore the psychology of bullies and how to face them properly.

Warning.

In this piece, I will discuss bullies from an anthropological perspective. I’m not encouraging them or justifying tragedies that may have been caused. This is an amoral and objective analysis.

Let’s begin.

All of us have experienced bullying during our childhood in one way or another. At the time, it felt like a cruel injustice. We weren’t punished because we had made a mistake, but simply because of who we were.

How could this happen?

Bullying is a tribal way for children to regulate weak members. Or I would say, to standardize a mass.

Bullies victimize the self-effacing child. The one who doesn’t fit in. They want him to rebel and prove himself to the group in order to be approved.

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