THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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possibilities (Erikson, 1959). In unstable societies, however, the discrepancy between the
identity needs of the youth, and the restricted identity possibilities afforded by society,
leads to a sense of social alienation and prolonged identity confusion. The attraction of
satanic ritual is that it is perceived to offer participants a sense of control over their lives
and environment (Moody, 1974). All ritual is directed toward "the problem of
transformations of state in human beings or nature" (Wallace cited in Moody, 1974, p.
367), and the transformation which Satanists seek is that which will ameliorate a profound
sense of inadequacy, identity confusion, social and spiritual alienation, and powerlessness.
At some point, the adoption of a negative identity (Erikson, 1968) presents itself as a
solution to their psychological and social alienation. At the social level, this means
actively embracing a deviant role that wins them the longed-for admiration and acceptance
from peer members ofthe chosen youth subculture. The adoption ofa negative identity is
experienced as gratifying because it elicits peer respect and admiration, while
simultaneously protecting individuals from the split-off, anxiety-provoking self
representations.
At the intrapsychic level, it means identifying with a destructive identity structure or
subpersonality based upon the hostile paternal introject, thereby counteracting a sense of
weakness and inferiority by becoming powerful and controlling. This typically results in
aggressive or cruel behaviour, as individuals unconsciously reverse their childhood
experience of being victims of parental maltreatment, by becoming the perpetrators, while
projecting their hurt and impotent self experience into the objects oftheir sadism. Subject
three recalls his childhood cruelty: "From young, I used to have the compulsion to hurt
something I used to have to hurt the dog - kick it, throw it against the door, or
whatever That spread, it just grew when I was a Satanist". This recalls Kernberg's
(1992) concept of malignant narcissism (see Chapter Ten), in which masochistic
submission to tyrannical superego precursors results in a deformed self structure that
unites sadism with idealisation, resulting in identification with the idealised cruel internal
tyrant. The consequence of these dynamics is evident in a number of the research
subjects. Subject seven recalls that, as a child, "My head was always stuck in fantasies