THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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gratification, reversed the traditional paternal prohibition of Christianity, and intensified
S's idealisation. S felt obliged to demonstrate his commitment to Satan and his cause by
recruiting new followers (62). S had thus fulfilled his unconscious childhood wish to be
the devoted son ofa loving father, a dramatic reversal ofhis painful childhood experience.
14.6.3. Experience ofsatanic cult involvement
S believed his satanic activity was morally justifiable work in the service of spiritual
goodness, and enthusiastically began recruiting new followers (40,48). The idealisation of
power and destructiveness made this inversion of good and bad moral poles possible, and
allowed S to identifY with his destructive self representation, rather than continue to split
this off. S was thus identified with a narcissistic structure comprising the idealised
paternal part-object, and his destructive self representations. The result was the formation
of an ego-syntonic destructive subpersonality. Satanic ideology provided ideological
support for S's destructiveness. He devoted himself to generating conflict and confusion
among Christians, destroying their faith by sending demons to attack their families or
cause their financial ruin (49,50,53,54,55). S believed that he could destroy the Christian
enemy with his magical power, so demonstrating the omnipotent destructive fantasies
arising from identification with the previously dissociated destructive subpersonality. S
relished his "supernatural" powers, and believed that he controlled the possessing demons
responsible for them (47). His contempt and hatred for others contrasted with his selfidealisation
and sense of superiority (52,59). This division of grandiosity and contempt
reveals S's use of projective identification, whereby his own denigrated self
representations were defensively located, and attacked, in his Christian enemy. S willingly
drank blood at ritual sacrifices in order to obtain supernatural power, thus displaying the
infantile oral fantasy of magically absorbing the power of the parental object through oral
incorporation (57,61).
S was instructed by Satan to join the police force, in order to mislead its members and
spread corruption (66). During the course ofhis training he befriended susceptible trainee
police officers, using drugs, alcohol, and occult philosophy to make them amenable to
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