THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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abuse, holding professional conferences, and running workshops on the detection and
treatment of psychological trauma associated with ritual abuse. A consequence of this
professional medical and psychological scrutiny was that a new category of victim
emerged, the ritual abuse survivor. These survivors horrified professionals and laypersons
alike with barely imaginable accounts of depravity and sadism committed in the service of
Satan. The therapeutic process with ritual abuse survivors uncovered 'repressed
memories' of bestiality, rape, physical and mental torture, sacrificial murder, and
cannibalism. The Satanism scare spread from America to Britain, and other countries,
such as South Africa, where a special occult crime unit was formed to investigate and
prosecute Satanic crime.
Although belief in demonic forces and diabolical societies has a long history in Western
culture, its extent, intensity, and dramatic renaissance at a time when secular ideology,
intellectual sophistication, and technological progress had seemingly consigned it to the
status of primitive superstition, poses a number of fascinating questions for social
scientists. At a sociological level, the obvious question concerns the nature and
confluence of those social forces responsible for generating Satanic cults at this particular
juncture in Western history. At a psychological level, the inquiry concerns the individual
histories, motives, and psychological status ofthose deviants who commit extreme acts of
ritual sadism in homage to an evil deity. These questions, of course, presuppose the literal
existence of Satanic cults and their ritual activities. However, in social scientific and
investigative journalistic circles, an intellectual backlash against the anti-Satanism
movement has seen a proliferation ofpublications dismissing the claims that secret Satanic
cults exist, and that incidents of Satanic ritual abuse are increasing at an alarming rate.
Under the intellectual banner of constructionism these authors argue that, given the
conspicuous absence· of empirical evidence supporting the existence of secret Satanic
cults, the alleged Satanic threat is purely illusory. This illusion, and popular belief in its
reality - even among educated mental health, legal, and law enforcement professionals - is
explicable in terms of the ideological relationship between social insecurities, discursive
practices, and vested political interests.