THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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the hostile castrating father becomes the universal source ofstrength" (p. 19). He goes on
to suggest that another defence mechanism, 'identification with the aggressor', is
employed. He understands this to mean "the introjection of the object of fear, which
helps the transformation of fear to security" (p. 19). In the case of female Satan
worshippers, Zacharias suggests that the Devil "becomes by projection the oedipal loveobject,
once utterly unattainable, and now at last within their grasp" (p. 20). For both
male and female participants, Satanism provides the opportunity for the regressive
fulfilment of aggressive and/or incestuous wishes. The psychological merit of these
historians' sketchy and crude applications of Freudian theory to Satanic phenomena is
less important than their conviction that the history of diabolic witchcraft and Satanism
can be rendered intelligible within a psychoanalytic framework.
Summary
This chapter constructed a comprehensive classical psychoanalytic interpretation of
satanic worship from Freud's few references to demonic possession. This required a
review of Freud's general psychology of religion and the origin of the idea of God in
humankind. God, argues Freud, is a psychological construct modelled on the young
child's individual and collective experience of the father figure. The father's ideals and
moral prohibitions are internalised as the superego and projected in the form of a
mythical deity who embodies both nurturing and punitive qualities. Freud believed that
the Devil originates in the oedipal child's repressed experience of his father as hated and
feared, projected in the form of a deity who is separate from, and antagonistic to, God. At
the same time, the Devil comprises split-off and projected sexual and aggressive
impulses, which are in conflict with the superego. The close correspondence between the
qualities of the· unconscious and qualities attributed to the Devil - sexuality,
destructiveness, filth, and deception - were cited in support ofthis interpretation. Satan is
thus.a composite figure based on projected negative self and object characteristics.
Demonic possession in Freud's case study represents a neurotic solution to the loss of an
ambivalently loved and hated father figure, who is the object of unresolved oedipal
conflict. The modern-day absence of classical possession symptoms, argues Freud,