THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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himself to be a willing receptacle for this alien figure. Unconsciously, however, it
represented the manifestation of a primitive, destructive part of his own mind, capable of
attacking and harming hated objects through the fantasised equation of omnipotent
thought with magical action.
Initially, S invited possession by this destructive subpersonality because of the power it
gave him, and because satanic cult ideology perversely celebrates destructiveness as good,
by virtue ofit's antithesis to Christian ideology. However, the more S surrendered himself
to fantasies of possession, the more he experienced these "alien," aggressive parts of his
own mind as invading and taking control of his central self structure. This process
resulted in S experiencing confusion, dissociated mental states, and loss of ego control,
culminating in a frenzied attack on his friends which he could not recall after the event
(71,76,77). This was frightening for S, who felt colonised and controlled by these
autonomous subpersonality components, comprising dissociated parts of his own mind,
identified with primitive bad parental part-objects. These fantasies of destructive
subpersonality aspects colonising and attacking healthy parts of himself, gave rise to
persecutory anxiety, despair, and thoughts of suicide as the only means of escaping the
demonic invaders (75,78). When S later rejected Satanism, the increased polarisation of
dissociated good and bad parts ofhimself gave rise to S's experience ofintensified internal
demonic attacks in the form of headaches, nausea, discomforting visions, and
uncontrollable compulsions to shout and swear (83,86).
14.4.5. The process and experience of leaving Satanism
S, driven to despair by increasingly ego-dystonic experiences of demonic control,
confessed his situation to a Christian counsellor, and earnestly prayed to God to rescue
him from Satan (79,80,81,82). Satan, the previously idealised object had, as a
consequence of splitting defences, become identified with the persecutory bad object,
while God became a potential saviour, who might rescue him from the bad object's
demonic attacks. This attempt to betray the destructive subpersonality (Satan) by
expelling it through Christian exorcism, aggravated S's paranoid fantasies of demonic
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