Key points

Over-identification with the label of “victim” can become a psychological trap.

Kaufman challenges readers to balance acknowledgment of hardship with cultivation of their inner resources.

We are not merely products of our pasts but the agents who shape our own lives.

In Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential (Penguin, 2025), psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman delivers a timely and incisive critique of what he calls “victim mindset culture”—the growing tendency for individuals to view themselves primarily through the lens of past hurts and limitations, rather than as active agents in their own growth and transformation.

Kaufman, a well-respected cognitive psychologist and prolific science communicator, is no stranger to the l

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