THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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polarities between dissociated part-objects (God and Satan), has allowed S to permanently
project the destructive parts of himself into Satan, and commit himself completely to
God's cause.
Subject Seven
14.7.1. Predisposing factors
S recalls being an introverted, asocial, and ruthlessly aggressive child, who constantly felt
the need to harm objects, animals, and people (1,2,4,5). His childhood memories are
coloured by hatred, and the urge to violate the world around him. Whatever the origin of
S's intensely aggressive fantasies, his earliest object experience would have been tainted
by his destructiveness, and prevented the establishment of a good internal object. The
introjection of objects imbued with his destructive projections would have created an
internal world populated by hostile and sadistic bad objects. S's relationship with his
parents was, not surprisingly, characterised by conflict and a lack of communication (7).
He hated his parents, who he perceived as critical and rejecting (10,11). Furthermore, S's
aggressive behaviour led to him being ostracised by others, and feeling like a social outcast
(3), thereby intensifying his hatred, and his tendency to withdraw from a world perceived
as hostile.
Despite his childhood preoccupation with destructive fantasies, there is evidence of a
libidinal part of S which felt depressive anxiety in response to his mounting hatred, and the
prospect of this contaminating the external world. S had in fantasy externalised his good
objects to protect them from his destructive internal world, but now feared for their safety
outside of him. Feeling sickened and devoured by hatred, he would isolate himself in his
bedroom, thereby temporarily insulating others from his own destructiveness (6,8). S's
schizoid withdrawal almost severed all connection with the social world and, despite
resenting school life, he realised that this was all that tenuously connected him to society
(12,13). S appears to have coped defensively with extreme depressive anxiety by
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