THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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Fairbairn, by deliberately employing the metaphor of possession to describe the
phenomenology of psychopathology, re-establishes a respectful attitude to the
experiential reality of demonic possession and exorcism, while not naively accepting the
literal reality of any ecclesiastical worldview:
It is to the realm of these bad objects, I feel convinced, rather than to the
realm of the super-ego that the ultimate origin of all psychopathological
developments is to be traced; for it may be said of all psychoneurotic and
psychotic patients that, if a True Mass is being celebrated in the chancel, a
Black Mass is being celebrated in the crypt. It becomes evident, accordingly,
that the psychotherapist is the true successor to the exorcist, and that he is
concerned, not only with the 'forgiveness of sins', but also with the 'casting
out of devils' (Fairbairn, 1943, p. 70).
Fairbairn (1943) comments briefly and critically on Freud's interpretation of the
Haizmann case, using his contrasting perspective on the latter to demonstrate his point of
departure from Freudian metapsychology. His main quarrel is with the drive discharge
theory and its inability to illuminate the role played by internalised object relations in the
genesis and maintenance of psychopathology: "There could be no better evidence of the
misleading influence ofthe libido theory that even Freud should fail to appreciate the real
significance ofdemoniacal possession after coming so near to doing so" 2 (1986, p. 114).
For Freud, as was noted earlier, demons are sexual or aggressive impulse derivatives,
melded in an unexplained fashion with paternal images, repressed and projected onto the
external world where they are then perceived as external forces and entities. Fairbairn's
central criticism of this formulation is that possession - and any form of functional
psychopathology - involves the internalisation of bad object relationships, rather than the
vicissitudes of instinctual derivatives:
2 This observation was not included in the original 1943 version ofthis paper.