THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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Alienation is always from something that is around and outside the individual.
One of the most valuable insights of modern social science has been the
discovery that patterns of deviant behaviour are not merely the product of
disordered intrapsychic processes or impediments of development, although
these play an unquestioned and critical role; but that the organization of social
structures and social processes within which the individual functions has a
determining influence on the patterns ofadaptation (p. 278-279).
This consideration becomes important in accounting for the fact that all Satanists in South
Africa appear to be white youths and young adults from predominantly lower middle-class
families. This author (Ivey 1993a, b), attempting to account for an alleged increase in
recent South African Satanic involvement, identifies the recent disruption of the political
status quo as an important factor determining the attraction of Satanism to the white,
working class sector of the population. This argument is based on the relationship
between political instability, economic insecurity, and social alienation. The years 1988 to
the present represented one of the most turbulent and chaotic periods of social transition
in South African history. Seen from the perspective of most lower middle-class whites,
this transition involved the collapse of Afrikaner nationalism, the demise of apartheid
legislation, the legalisation of most forms of political opposition, runaway inflation,
massive unemployment, the erosion ofracial privilege and white standards of living, and a
feeling of powerlessness and insecurity in the face of black majority rule. For white
adolescents, rootless, anxious, powerless, and alienated from the ideologies of the past, a
magical solution to their social and psychological plight becomes very enticing. Satanism
seems to promise such a solution, resulting in increasing numbers of white youth and
young adults being attracted to Satanic cults. In contrast, Satanism has little allure for
black South Africans because traditional African religious systems have always subscribed
to beliefs in magic, ancestral spirits, and an essentially pantheistic worldview foreign to the
dualistic monotheism ofChristian spirituality.
For these working class white youths, feeling rejected, abused, and unloved by parental
figures, their unmet needs for affirmation and acceptance become displaced onto
individuals, groups and institutions outside of the family. At first, this is largely confined