Phenomenological victimology:

fundamental assumptions of an approach aimed at the reconfiguration of being-in-the-world based on apparent victimization

Abstract

Victimology, as traditionally developed, has largely focused on processes of victimization and on the victim’s behavior prior to the criminal act, often relying on explanatory categories that tend to objectify the victim’s experience. This article proposes an alternative approach, termed phenomenological victimology, whose object of study shifts from the causality of victimization to the way in which the criminal event reconfigures the victim’s mode of being-in-the-world. Grounded in Martin Heidegger’s existential phenomenology, this perspective understands the victim as Dasein, whose existence is marked by an ontological rupture caused by the crime, affecting their relationship with the world, with others, and with themselves. From this standpoint, the article outlines the fundamental assumptions of phenomenological victimology, distancing itself from positivist and systematizing ambitions, and proposing a descriptive, open, and interdisciplinary methodological attitude. Finally, the implications of this approach for Psychology and Law are examined, particularly regarding the understanding of the victim’s experience, qualified listening, and the construction of legal responses that are more attentive to the existential dimension of suffering resulting from violence.