THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

259
from his identification with the destructive subpersonality, and the gratifying fantasy of
murdering his hated father with each victim he killed (69,79,120,121).
In addition to being an assassin, S described himself as a "watcher", based upon his
conscious identification with the mythical watching angels, who accompanied Satan on his
expulsion from heaven (80,81). He would watch to see that cult members, including the
powerful high priest, did not transgress their roles, or threaten the life of the coven. This
function gave him the belief that he had power over the high priest, whose authority and
actions he viewed with suspicion. This represented an unconscious transference enaction
of his childhood role of being the one who had to watch his father, and attack him to
avenge the paternal abuse and save his family(7, 9). S's self-perception of having power
over the high priest suggests a compensatory fantasy related to his own childhood
experience ofbeing a helpless victim and observer ofhis father's violent power.
S's violent attacks on others was not confined to his satanic activities, but extended to all
situations in which he perceived himself, or female companions, to be threatened or
humiliated. These attacks were unconscious acts of retribution for his father's abuse of
him and the female members of his family (85,90,101). S's destructiveness was not only
physically enacted, but assumed the form of omnipotent conscious fantasies, in which he
believed that he could kill others by merely willing them dead (124,125,126). The
conviction that he possessed magical destructive power over others' lives, represented the
triumphant gratification ofthe childhood wish to kill his father, thereby further inflating his
destructive grandiosity.
Every conceivable perverse sexual activity, from incest to bestiality, was practised in the
cult (l18) S's description of the cult activities focused on the Black Mass
(108,109,110, 111,117), and human sacrificial rituals (107,114,115,116). The communion
ritual was a perverse travesty of the sacred Christian ceremony, in which the figure of
Christ and the Eucharist were symbolically debased through acts of blood drinking,
sodomy, spitting, and ejaculation.
S recalls experiencing a state of mounting frenzied
259