THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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supply of power/nourishment. He thus began reading literature on Satanism, and eagerly
accepted friends' invitation to attend a satanic meeting (19,20).
14.3.2. Process of satanic involvement and initiation
Three months after attending his first meeting, S was ceremonially welcomed into a
Satanist coven, after undergoing a ritual initiation in which he violated Christian symbols
and signed a pact with Satan in his own blood. S felt elated and omnipotent as, for the
first time, he was able to enact the fantasy ofbeing a loved and accepted child, surrounded
by a surrogate family of idealised satanic parents and siblings (28,36). During his
initiation, he saw a demon materialise, and felt physical pain as he experienced the demon
enter him (23). This suggests that S, drawing on his reading and cult instruction, began to
interpret his hallucinated destructive projections as demonic intrusions. The initiation
ceremony, in which conventional notions of good and evil were reversed, and the
traditionally evil figure of Satan was worshipped, facilitated the re-introjection of
previously projected bad objects as demons. However, the pain associated with this reintrojection
suggests that S experienced some anxiety in relation to the demonic entity, as
it was unconsciously identified with primitive, sadistic superego aspects, based on
destructive parental part-objects.
14.3.3. Experience of satanic involvement
Satanic ritual activities centred upon using malevolent magic to harm others, thereby
encouraging S's pre-existing, magical sadistic fantasies of hurting family members he had
experienced as cruel and rejecting. Persecutory parental objects were thus killed and
tortured in fantasy, providing sadistic gratification, while strengthening S's self
representation of an omnipot~ntly destructive, avenging child (29,47). The cult emphasis
on reversing conventional notions of good and bad, and on discrediting Christianity,
bolstered S's splitting defences, minimised guilt, and promoted identification with his
destructive subpersonality (30,38). S's splitting defences, together with the didactic and
hierarchical character of the coven, allowed S to feel like the good child, receiving loving
attention from idealised parental figures, an experience strongly contrasting with his
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