THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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other Satanists (129). Strength of character determines success in the anxiety-provoking
cult environment, where one is obliged to defend one's power and usurp the power of
others (134). Ritual sexual activity created interpersonal ties based on the introjective and
projective fantasies that psychic aspects of oneself are literally transferred and located in
the other during sexual intercourse (132).
S's parents' Christian devotion, and lack of concern for him, together with his eviction
from the family dwelling, prevented their early discovery of his satanic involvement
(85,86). S's conflictual relationship with his parents deteriorated sharply following the
onset of his satanic involvement. They responded to his rebellious behaviour by
unsuccessfully attempting to discipline him with restrictions, physical beatings, and
counselling by other adults (93,94). S responded with hatred and defiance, perceiving his
parents, as he did all Christians, to be deceitful and morally corrupt (101,102). S's satanic
identity may partly be attributed to his hostile reaction against the religion of his parents.
By embracing Satanism, he could punish and destroy his hated parents, and defiantly assert
himself against them by virtue of an antagonistic spiritual orientation. When interpersonal
conflict and other misfortunes occurred in S's family, he knew that his family were victims
of the magical power he carried within him (108,109). S responded defiantly to his
father's attempts to counter the family's misfortunes with daily prayer meetings, by
secretly praying to Satan.
S's hatred was expressed in destructive and suicidal fantasies of punishing his parents for
having wronged him (103). As a consequence of S's splitting defences, his parents
became unequivocally bad objects, whereas Satan was an idealised parental figure. Satan
answered his prayers, and provided for him like a good father (97,98,99,100). Believing
that Satan wished him to misbehave, S did so in order to please his god (107). He further
believed that Satan loved his audacity, arrogance, and aggression (120). Satanism thus
provided the opportunity for a perverse union between S's destructive subpersonality,
established upon the internalisation of bad objects, and his idealised paternal part-object
relationship. By idealising a bad internal object, projectively manifest as the figure of
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