Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 11
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
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
