THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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unattainable with the patient's inner means" (Erikson, cited in Roazen, 1976, p. 102).
Social rejection ofthe negative identity simply fixes and rigidifies it, as well as cements a
sense of delinquent in-group belonging and identity. Satanism provides the ultimate
negative identity in predominantly Christian societies, and the satanic cult is an
exemplary counter-cultural delinquent group.
Senior (1993) attempted to establish the relationship between identity formation and
adolescent involvement in Satanism by administering Hawley's (1988) Measures of
Psychosocial Development (MPD) to 15 adolescents who had been involved in Satanism.
The MPD, an instrument designed to objectively measure Erikson's constructs, revealed
that the satanic sample scored significantly lower than matched comparison subjects on
the measure of identity, and significantly higher than comparison subjects on identity
confusion, thereby providing empirical confirmation of a link between adolescent Satanic
involvement and identity confusion. She concludes that adolescent Satanism reflects an
extreme form of identity confusion, viz. the adoption of a negative identity. These
adolescents have:
contemptuously rejected the roles offered to them by their families and
communities as 'proper'. Instead, they have based their identities on the
travesty and perversion of the religion held sacred by their families,
worshipping, instead, what has been presented to them throughout their
development as most undesirable, most dangerous - Satan. They have
committed themselves to values that counter to those prescribed by orthodox
religion, and act out their opposite: indulgence and instant gratification
instead of abstinence, pride and egotism rather than humility, vengeance and
open expression of hostility instead of restraint, 'evil' in lieu of 'good', black
in place of white. They symbolically enact the desecration of their families'
and communities' most sacrosanct traditions in the Satanic rituals and
ceremonies that they practice" (Senior, 1993, p. 48).
The above quoted author's moralistic perspective, implicit in the use of such rhetorical
terms as "contemptuously", "travesty", and "perversion", alerts one to an implicit
assumption found in much of the psychological literature on Satanism - that Satanism is
an inherently destructive phenomenon, and therefore the participants must be