THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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thus defensively split offfrom a morally good and accomplished self representation, linked
in hope and needy anticipation, to a not-yet actualised loving and affirming mother.
This split was both aggravated and complicated by the internalisation of a hostile and
abusive paternal object, linked in hate and fear to the negative self representation. Thus, in
addition to feeling inadequate and unloved in relation to a rejecting internal mother, the
destructive interaction with a violent father intensified S's negative self experience, making
this self suborganisation vulnerable, threatened, and abused (8). S's painful attachment to
an abusive father was further pathologised, firstly by his refusal to acknowledge her female
body (9), thereby devaluing her feminine sexuality and, secondly, by subjecting her to the
prophecy, based on his own projective identifications, that her life would be a disaster
(l0). The final factor aggravating S's negative internal object world was her perception
that her male siblings received parental love, recognition, and material support denied to
her (5,12,15). This contributed feelings ofjealousy to her sense of rejection, and instilled
in her an embattled competitiveness (12,13,15).
S's only good object experience seems to have been the internalised presence of a loving
grandmother (14), who partially alleviated the strength of her hostile parental introjects.
The benign influence of this good object and, its associated self representation, was
powerfully undercut by two factors: firstly, the growing realisation that nothing S could
possibly do would elicit parental love (16) and, secondly, the dramatic discovery, during a
parental altercation, of her adoptive status (1). The shock of this discovery tipped her
psychic balance into a new state of profound identification with the negative self
representation, now unambiguously experienced as an abandoned orphan, unloved and
abused (5).
This total identification with one personality suborganisation meant the obliteration of the
"good" self suborganisation. The full instinctual charge of hatred was unleashed,
mobilising fantasies of taking revenge on her stepfather, now identified as a cruel tyrant
(17). This destabilisation ofS's personality, in favour ofthe negative selfsuborganisation,
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