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Herman‘s motivation for writing Trauma and Recovery was to show the commonalities
―between rape survivors and combat veterans, between battered women and political
prisoners, between the survivors of vast concentration camps created by tyrants who rule
nations, and the survivors of small, hidden concentration camps created by tyrants who rule
their homes‖ (Herman, 1992, p. 3). Tyrants who rule religious cults subject members to
similar violations.
To recapitulate, from a psychoanalytic perspective, the cult leader unconsciously
experiences his dependency needs as so deeply shameful that a delusion of omnipotence is
developed to ward off the toxic shame. It is urgent to the pathological narcissist, who knows
unconsciously that he is susceptible to extreme mortification (the sense of ―death‖ by
shame), that this delusion of omnipotence be sustained. Manic defenses help sustain the
delusion, but in addition, followers must be seduced and controlled so that the loathsome
dependence can be externalized, located in others and thereby made controllable. The
leader can then express his unconscious self-loathing through his ―compassion‖ (often thinly
disguised contempt) for his followers‘ weakness. Manically proclaiming his own perfection,
the leader creates a program of ―purification‖ for the follower. By enlisting the follower to
hold the shame that he projects and evacuates from his own psyche, the cult leader rids
himself of all shame, becoming, in effect, ―shameless.‖ He defines his shamelessness as
enlightenment, liberation, or self-actualization. It becomes important to the cult leader, for
the maintenance of his state of shamelessness on which his psychic equilibrium depends,
that there be no competition, that he alone, and no one else in the group, feels shameless.
So while apparently inviting others to attain his state of perfection (shamelessness) by
following him, the cult leader is actually constantly involved in inducing shame in his
followers, thereby maintaining his dominance and control. I have called this
sadomasochistic danse macabre the ―dark side of enlightenment‖ (see Shaw, 2000).
The Question of Pre-Existing and Induced Pathology: Blaming the Victim
As a psychoanalytically informed psychotherapist, I seek to identify what kinds of ideas
about the psychological organization of former cult members might be useful to consider
when seeking to help this population recover from traumatic cult experiences. Are there any
generalizable common denominators in terms of psychological organization and/or life
circumstances that can be useful in understanding how best to help this population? In
addressing these questions, it is necessary to confront two major themes: 1) pre-existing
pathology and induced pathology, and 2) the question of blaming the victim.
Theorists such as Fromm (1965), Becker (1973) and Berger (1967) have sought to
understand the dynamics of dominance and submission, sadism and masochism, that are
built into the human character and which are triggered in individuals and societies exposed
to certain influences. Fromm, and later Becker, were moved to explore these human traits
by the horror of Nazi Germany Berger‘s interest was oriented to the history of religion.
These ideas about man‘s vulnerability to certain ―pathological‖ behaviors can be used to
suggest that those who become cult victims are predisposed to submissive, sadomasochistic
behavior.
More recent theorists have been concerned with the phenomenon of blaming the victims of
rape and battering for asking for, or failing to put a stop to, the abuse they have suffered
(Herman, 1992 Kliger, 1994). McNew &Abell (1995) and Silver &Iacano (1986) use the
term ―sanctuary trauma‖ to describe how one who has already experienced severe trauma,
such as rape, often experiences a secondary trauma in what was expected to be a
supportive and protective environment, such as in a police station, a courtroom, or a
therapist‘s office. Herman (1992) notes that ―those who attempt to describe the atrocities
that they have witnessed also risk their own credibility. To speak publicly about one‘s
knowledge of atrocities is to invite the stigma that attaches to victims‖ (p. 2).

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The literature on working with former cult members stresses, for the most part, that the
pathology induced by the cult itself must be acknowledged, and the former member must
be helped with the array of problems resulting from this induced pathology, before any pre-
existing, underlying pathology is assumed or explored (Addis, Schulman-Miller, &Lightman,
1984 Clifford, 1994 Giambalvo, 1993 Goldberg, 1993 Goldberg &Goldberg, 1982
Halperin, 1983 Hassan, 1990 Kliger, 1994 Langone, 1993 Langone &Chambers, 1991
Martin, 1993 Martin, Langone, Dole, &Wiltrout, 1992 Tobias, 1993). To do otherwise, for
these authors, invalidates the reality of the client, constituting a stigmatizing message from
the therapist that the victims‘ traumatic experience has more to do with their
psychopathology than with the violations perpetrated by the group.
I strongly agree that cult victims can be inappropriately stigmatized or pathologized.
However, I suggest that clinicians risk creating a false dichotomy when we polarize the
issues of pre-existing pathology and induced pathology in cult victims. On the one hand,
anyone who has ever struggled with dependency, with separation and individuation, and
with conflicts over active and passive wishes and fears—in other words, any human being—
can be vulnerable to seduction into a cult. These struggles are universal developmental
issues, not evidence of psychiatric illness, and all human beings are potentially vulnerable to
regression to dependency, to the sense of smallness in the face of a great power, as in
childhood (Deikman, 1991). On the other hand, the concept of ―blaming the victim‖ is
misused, and unfair to the client, if it encourages clinicians to overlook pre-existing factors
which may have contributed to the client‘s cult victimization. As a former SYDA member
once said to me, ―they were selling, and we were buying.‖ A person with a history of
developmental trauma would have quite different reasons for ―buying‖ into a cult than
would someone who, for example, joined because he was born to parents who raised him in
the cult. In recovery, the latter person will be concerned with quite different issues, such as
resentment of his parents, grief about loss of education and social opportunities, for
example, than the person whose history of developmental trauma is what led him to
embrace cult membership in the first place.
Herman (1992) notes that ―trauma forces the survivor to relive all her earlier struggles over
autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy‖ (p. 52). Individuals leaving cults
will be faced with the need to rework these developmental tasks, and many other tasks
related to coming out of isolation. If these struggles were particularly difficult or traumatic
for the individual prior to cult participation, there is a good chance that they will become
significantly problematic during the recovery process and will need to be carefully worked
through.
Psychoanalytic Concepts Related to Cult Participation
Kohut and the Concept of the Selfobject.
Having made the case for the importance of considering the psychological history of exiting
cult members in working to help them recover from their cult experience, I now discuss
various psychoanalytic concepts I have found useful in my work with former cultists.
Christopher Lasch (1979), in describing the ―culture of narcissism,‖ used the example of the
writer Paul Zweig, a Siddha Yoga (SYDA) devotee, to illustrate his ideas about ―the void
within‖ that individuals in Western society have been struggling with in the post-WWII era.
Prior to his involvement in SYDA, Zweig (1976) spoke of his growing ―conviction, amounting
to a faith, that my life was organized around a core of blandness which shed anonymity
upon everything I touched ...[of] the emotional hibernation which lasted until I was
almost thirty ...[of persisting] suspicion of personal emptiness which all my talking and my
anxious attempts at charm surround and decorate, but don‘t penetrate or even come close
to ...[When] the experience of inner emptiness, the frightening feeling that at some level
of existence I‘m nobody, that my identity has collapsed and no one‘s there‖ becomes