THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

351
see the look ofagony in the victim's face so as to establish contact once again
with his or her own suffering self at one remove, that is, projected into the
victim. It is only in the intimate observation of the agony of the "other" that
these people can feel "truly" in contact with themselves. This dynamic
explanation is side by side with another more obvious one, that of the manic
defence, in which one's own victimized self is denied by translocating it into
a victim (p. 223).
The Black Mass, too, is a perverse ritual which evokes a universe of sacrilege, rather than
transcendent contact with the sacred. In Chapter Ten, Chasseguet-Smirgel's (1984)
definition of perversion as the reversal of values in order to reinstate primal chaos, was
discussed. Chasseguet-Smirgel argued that perversion involves the overthrow of the
oedipal father-creator, and the creation of an alternative "anal" universe based on chaos,
sacrilege, subversion of law, narcissistic abolition of difference between subject and
object, replacement of truth by falsity, and the substitution of knowledge by magic.
Aspects of this perverse state of mind are evident in subject five's description of
hypomania and moral inversion: "1 grew to hate those around me. Satan was destroying
my conscience. What was bad, to me became good. Any sense of guilt 1 had was ...
replaced with feelings oftriumph and success". The extent of Satanists' hatred and its
interpersonal manifestation is clearly expressed by subject seven: "I saw people as things
to torture, manipulate. devalue, and demoralise. J hated everyone".
Chasseguet-Smirgel's interpretation of perversion has considerable relevance to the
meaning of the Black Mass, where God is clearly identified with the dethroned and
denigrated oedipal father, and the satanic participants with the omnipotent evil son
(Satan). The liturgical rite is reversed and corrupted, infantile anxiety and impotence are
replaced by manic triumph, contempt is substituted for gratitude and humility, sacred
symbols are destroyed, indiscriminate instinctual gratification supplants renunciation,
every conceivable taboo is flouted, and sadism triumphs over generativity. The cult's
ideological licence to indulge in any manner of sexual gratification is strongly attractive
to participants. Subject seven captures the attraction of this permissiveness: "No one
said, 'Don't do this ", or, 'It's immoral '. In fact, you are encouraged to have sex as much
as you like".