THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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derives from their childhood experIence of paternal figures, overlaid by inherited
phylogenetic memory traces of a primal father. Whatever the real nature of children's
relationships with their fathers, they are complicated by oedipal impulses and fantasies,
and these characteristic ambivalent feelings and attitudes find displaced expression in the
individual's perception of God. A strong impetus to religious belief is the human
species' collective memory of the parricidal slaying of the primal father, which reinforces
humankind's need for social taboos and religious ritual atonement. The superego is the
psychic structure which serves as a template for God. The internalised image of the
father, which forms the nucleus of the superego, is externalised via the mechanism of
projection to create the perception of a deity independent of our own psychic life. The
spectre of Oedipus hangs over humankind's spiritual quests, and the inherent sinfulness
which Christianity attributes to man takes on a new and poignant significance in the light
of our incestuous and parricidal wishes, and the accompanying eternal remorse. For these
ontogenetic and phylogenetic reasons, religion is necessarily bound up with moral taboos,
sin, guilt and the desire for reconciliation with a deity injured and angered by the actions
of 'His children'. For the same reason, the incest taboo and the law of exogamy are
strictly observed in all known cultures. Religious belief and practice, because it serves
the unconscious function of controlling unconscious impulses and assuaging the anxiety
and guilt associated with prohibited fantasies, has the same status as neurotic symptoms
and other compromise formations.
7.2 Satan, demonic pacts, and demonic possession in classical psychoanalysis
Freud was heir to the psychogenic interpretations of possession postulated by his
intellectual forebears, Janet and Charcot. It is thus not surprising to find Breuer, Freud's
co-author ofStudies on Hysteria (1893-95), asserting:
The split-off mind is the devil with which the unsophisticated observation of
early superstitious times believed that these patients were possessed. It is true
that a spirit alien to the patient's waking consciousness holds sway in him;
but the spirit is not in fact an alien one, but a part ofhis own (p. 250).