THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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father's premature death (abandonment of the child), and the dissolute life that he led, as
being important influences on Fabian's identifications. Fabian, Klein concludes, was in
fact looking for a good father, but was unable to find him "because envy and greed,
increased by grievance and hatred, determined his choice of father-figures" (1955, p.
173).
Not only destructive impulses, but also loving feelings are projected onto external
objects, and these become the nucleus of good object internalisation and identification:
"Since Fabian had lost ... his good self, he did not feel that there was enough goodness
within him for identification with a very good object" (1955, p. 173). In other words,
objects rendered bad by destructive projective identifications are re-introjected and
identified with, thereby further depriving individuals of any sense of internal goodness.
This, in turn, prevents the projection of loving impulses onto external objects, and further
mitigates against the possibility of securing good objects. Fabian, having identified with
bad objects, was filled with self-hatred. This was a further stimulus to projective
identification, by means of which he unconsciously sought to locate the split-off ideal
counterpart to his bad self aspects: "The search for the lost ideal self, which is an
important feature of mental life, inevitably includes the search for lost ideal objects; for
the good self is that part ofthe personality which is felt to be in loving relation to its good
objects" (1955, p. 173).
To the already complex origin of the Devil in the child's greedy, envious, jealous, and
homosexual impulses, projected onto a split-off bad paternal object, and subsequently reintrojected,
is added the role ofthe mother. In Freud's Haizmann case study, we saw that
Freud attributed no role at all to the mother in explaining the origin of Haizmann's
affliction. However, in Kleinian theory, the mother - the child's first object and introject
- has a decisive role to play in pathogenesis. Greed and envy, the root of Fabian's
depression and association with the Devil, have their origin in the infant's relationship
with the maternal object. Fabian's mother, although dutiful, was incapable of affection
and tenderness. Klein concludes from this that: "Fabian's whole character and his strong