THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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broader society. By encouraging and accepting what is traditionally bad - sadism, incest,
perversion and destructiveness - Satan sanctions a moral inversion in which destructive
parts of the self are idealised, and libidinal parts of the self denigrated. Satan is thus the
father who loves his children because of their "badness", rather than in spite of it.
Identification with this idealised paternal part-object thus entrenches and feeds the
destructive subpersonality, projected and personified in the awe-inspiring images of Satan
described above.
This situation, however, is only tenable as long as the diabolical subpersonality is slavishly
worshipped, and libidinal parts of the personality are hated, dissociated, and attacked in
their externalised form as the loathsome Christian enemy. Any reparative impulses,
tenderness, compassion, doubts about the cause, or loss of enthusiasm for the cult's
sadistic rituals, suddenly transforms Satan from a loving father into a persecutory tyrant.
Following the logic of splitting mechanisms, Satan suddenly becomes the bad paternal
part-object, while the Satanist becomes the hapless child victim of a cruel, enraged father
figure. It is at this point that subjects suddenly experience their possessing demons to be
internal persecutors, instructed by Satan to punish the offending member.
The realisation that they cannot influence or escape their possessing demons is a terrifying
experience for Satanists. They typically experience .fantasies of these autonomous
subpersonality components colonising, controlling, and attacking other self aspects. The
resulting persecutory anxiety and despair is so intense that individuals contemplate, or
even attempt suicide, as a last desperate strategy to escape the demonic invaders. The
more subjects attempt to leave or distance themselves from Satanism, the more savage the
demonic attacks become. These attacks do not merely result in psychological distress, but
also somatic symptoms. Headaches, nausea, boils, stomach cramps, vomiting, ranksmelling
sweating, and oral bleeding are some ofthe somatic symptoms subjects attributed
to demonic possession.
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