THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

227
consciousness, before it IS
once again defensively extruded, usually with the aid of
exorcism rituals.
However, if dis-identification or dissociation is a defence against the demonic
subpersonality in religious individuals, those involved in Satanism employ the counterphobic
defence of identification with the destructive subpersonality. From this
perspective, a dissociated autonomous complex, consolidated around an archetypal
object, constitutes a destructive subpersonality, which finds an external 'home' in satanic
cult activity. The subpersonality is no less terrifying in these cases, but there is the
unconscious realisation that by allying oneself with the destructive psychic organisation it
will prove less persecutory, and provide a source of extraordinary power. This strategy is
the defence of choice in those individuals whose pre-satanic personalities are based on
addiction to bad objects, and who find in satanic cults a formalised ritual expression of
their own internal subservience to these bad objects. This identification, which lung
aptly terms inflation, results in state of manic omnipotence and idealisation of
destructiveness, ceremonially formalised in satanic rituals.
Any attempts by the individuals concerned to escape from the cult, or distance themselves
from the diabolical subpersonality, confronts them with the tyrannical vengefulness of
Satan and his forces, which attempt to destroy the soft, vulnerable, needy, feeling and
compassionate parts of the personality. This is organisationally reinforced by the ritual
cursing and physical punishment of individuals who try to leave the cult. For those who
stay, the good parts ofthe personality become increasingly more occluded and tyrannised,
until they cease to have any effective influence at all. The power of the magical satanic
rituals inheres in the fact that these rituals enact the same primitive fantasies, based on
splitting and dissociation, that have ruled the pre-Satanists' interactions with their internal
objects since their dysfunctional origin in childhood.
Summary