THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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be a crazed, perverse, and unjust tyrant (4,5,68,70). S experienced himself as an
introverted, helpless, fearful, rejected and persecuted child in relation to a senselessly cruel
father. The internalisation of this father figure created a destructive and persecutory
paternal part-object, linked to an impotent, abused and rejected self representation.
Defensive introjective identification with the bad paternal object created an omnipotently
destructive subpersonality. The malevolence of this was aggravated by the father's
projection of his own murderousness, originating in the latter's violent relationship with
his own father, into his son (51,52). Anxiety occasioned by this destructive intrapsychic
configuration resulted in it being split off and dissociated from S's central self, where it
manifested projectively in the form of fearful supernatural entities attempting to make
contact with him (57).
A second internal object relationship, arising from the original splitting of the paternal
figure, comprised a fantasised ideal part-object in the form of an omnipotent, loving, and
protecting father figure. This idealised part-object representation could not be mobilised
to counteract the bad internal object, as the persistent reality of S's abusive environment
reinforced the power ofthe destructive part-object. The corresponding self representation
ofthis second part object relation was the loved and special child of a devoted father, far
removed from the reality of S's paternal relationship.
S's mother afforded him no protection from his father, and refused to counteract her
husband's abuse of her and her children. Thus, although S loved her, the parent-child
roles were reversed, with S being forced to protect his mother and sister from his father's
brutality (5,6,7,9,10,71). S resented his mother's failure to protect him (71), and she was
perceived by him to be passively complicit in her son's abuse. He consequently
internalised an ambivalent maternal figure, who he experienced as loving, but also as
weak, neglectful, uncaring, and untrustworthy. The defensive splitting of the maternal
object resulted in a loved, vulnerable maternal figure, who needed to be defended against
his father's abuse, and a co-existing neglectful, passive and uncaring maternal part-object
(71). The qualities ofthe bad maternal part-object were projected into S's abusive father,
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