THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

138
Although the infant's earliest object relationships are part-object relationships,
characterised by splitting defences and paranoid anxiety, the ego's growing capacity for
synthesis and integration draws good and bad aspects of the internal objects together.
This results in the infant relating to whole, rather than part-objects, and introduces a
second form of anxiety, called depressive anxiety, characterised by the infant's fear that
his/her destructive impulses have injured, killed, or driven away the loved internal and
external objects, resulting in guilty and depressive feeling states (Klein, 1948; 1952). This
leads to the "over-riding urge to preserve, repair or revive the loved objects: the tendency
to make reparation" (Klein, 1948, p. 35).
In cases where hate and sadism predominate over loving feelings, the infant's reparative
fantasies are not sufficient to revive the good object, resulting in the employment of the
manic defence in which a combination of denial, contempt, idealisation, splitting, and
omnipotent control of internal and external objects is mobilised to counter depressive
(and persecutory) anxiety (Klein, 1952a). The result is an inflated manic/hypomanic state
characterised by feelings of "triumph, closely bound up with contempt and omnipotence
.... The triumph over his internal objects which the young child's ego controls, humiliates,
and tortures is a part of the destructive aspect of the manic position" (Klein, 1940, p. 351­
352). The positive aspect of the manic defence focuses on the omnipotent repair and
resurrection ofthe damaged object.
Persecutory anxieties may also be mobilised by the integrative trends of the depressive
position. Consequently, "the loved, injured object may very swiftly change into a
persecutor, and the urge to revive or repair the loved object may turn into the need to
pacify and propitiate a persecutor" (Klein, 1948, p. 37). Under normal circumstances, the
diminution of splitting and the gradual integration ofgood and bad self and object aspects
modulates the severity of the primitive superego figures, allowing their assimilation into
the self. At the same time, the more-or-Iess secure presence of good internal objects
creates a sense of relative well-being, trust, self-worth, and faith in one's ability to
establish loving relationships with both internal and external objects. Where aggressive