THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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man and originates from the experience of existing in separate subselves or separate
personalities which have never been totally unified into a single oneness" (Grotstein,
1981, p. 18).
9.3.3 Internalisation
The process whereby introjects become part of the developing psyche is tenned
internalisation. Once the introject has become, to a lesser or greater degree, assimilated
into the subject's self structure, we may speak of internalisation having taken place.
Loewald (in Meissner, 1981, p.7) defines internalisation as a general tenn for "certain
processes of transfonnation by which relationships and interactions between the
individual psychic apparatus and its environment are changed into inner relationships and
interactions within the psychic apparatus".3
The internalisation process has crucial developmental significance insofar as the
internalisation of aspects of object relations provides the foundation for the development
of intrapsychic structures (Behrends & Blatt, 1985). By this process, negative and
positive object representations deriving from relationships with external others are
transfonned into internal relationships (object relations), which organise the individual's
personality structure. Kernberg (1986) extends this understanding by indicating the
instinctual, and dyadic aspects ofinternalisation:
I use internalization as an umbrella concept to refer to the building up of
intrapsychic structures that reflect both actual and fantasied interactions with
significant objects under the impact of drive derivatives represented by
specific affect states. The basic unit of internalization '" is a dyadic one, that
is, it consists of a self and object representation in the context of a specific
affect representing libidinal and/or aggressive drives (Kernberg, 1986, p.
147).
3 The question of internalisation refers to the psychological processes by means of which real or imagined
"interactions with the environment or real or imagined characteristics of objects in the environment are
transformed into functional and integrated aspects of internal psychic systems" (Meissner, 1980, p. 240).
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