How Jade Goody became the new Princess Diana

Jade Goody and Princess Diana had much in common, not least the psychological roots of their stratospheric popularity. Like Jade, Diana was portrayed as a victim of the press, right up to the ravening presence of the paparazzi at her moment of death. Like Jade, Diana portrayed herself as a victim, in Diana's case of the royal family.

The story line is archetypal: the heroine sins, repents by claiming she was a victim of her circumstances, and attains love through her suffering. It is the universal story of the innocent woman who has been tainted by external forces and redeems herself through sacrifice - ultimately through death. She is the willing scapegoat, or in Goody's words, "escape goat", who sacrifices herself to purify the sins of others and to maintain the established order. This is the masochist's revenge against a world that has caused her harm.

A childhood of seeing people argue and swear turned Jade into an ‘escape goat’

This is something that that master of popular psychology, Max Clifford, has acutely realised.  Under his tutelage, Jade managed to transform herself from a figure of scandal and ridicule to an icon of heroic suffering.

Clifford told us how Jade came to him for help when her career was at rock bottom: "I knew her well enough to know that she was more sinned against than sinning." 

It's a remark that perhaps summed up Jade Goody's appeal to the public more than anything else - being sinned against has been her greatest trump card. And her unsuccessful battle against cancer dramatically epitomised Goody's fight between the forces of good and evil.

We can see a turning point in Jade's career in her interview with News of the World following her racist attack on Shilpa Shetty on Big Brother. Jade sobs on camera, apologising for her bullying and claiming ignorance of what she was doing.

She says: "I don't want anybody to feel they're scared of me or intimidated by me. I just don't know how to argue... I've been brought up on watching people argue and swear... It was what I d... the aggression that I held. And I don't want that aggression and I will make sure I get help so that aggression doesn't come out again."

The apology was heartfelt but what comes across most pointedly is her statement that she was "brought up on watching people argue and swear" - the implication being  that this is all she knew. Thus does the sinner become the sinned against. The ray of hope is that Goody also acknowledges that she needs help in controlling her aggression.

Here Goody had a chance of taking charge of her life and not continuing to be life's victim. But this would mean resisting the attraction of capitalising on her victim status and breaking the masochistic cycle.

Goody's iconic yet ambivalent status is vividly portrayed in a mural, possibly the work of the artist Banksy, that has appeared recently in Kentish Town, north London: in it, she is depicted as bald, with a pound sign branded on her forehead and vultures circling above her head.

Transforming herself into a heroic victim, Goody appeals to both men and women

The message is clear: Goody has become the victim of our modern world of celebrity greed, branding, and media exploitation. And while this may be true, there is the question of how complicit, how willing she was to revel in her own mortification - as Diana did.

By transforming herself into a heroic victim, Goody appealed to both men and women in a powerful way, much as Diana did. Women can identify with the masochistic victim who has suffered at the hands of others, whose anger and aggression is attributed to a reaction to maltreatment, and who is essentially blameless.

Women in this role are idealised - the greater their suffering,  the greater their cause - and at the same time they are stripped of agency. They remain victims of a sadistic world - in Goody's case the parents who "argue and swear". They appeal for mercy. And all along their continued suffering is a passive attack on the bad parents, as if to say, "look at what you have turned me into".

This is not just an attack but also a bid for love - "you will love me more if I suffer and allow you to abuse me".

For women who have seen themselves as relatively powerless in society, this masochistic self-image offers a perverse illusion of power - the power of being a victim.

For men, this is an image of woman that is compelling - it makes them feel that they are in some way responsible for alleviating the woman's suffering and confers an illusion of power on them as protectors and, unconsciously, as sadists.

The net effect is that this scenario restores the image of women as helpless and men as powerful - an age old story that satisfies something in everyone. And one of which Goody and Diana are archetypal protagonists. ·