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overwhelming, Zweig encounters Swami Muktananda, or Baba (Father), the original founder
of Siddha Yoga. From Baba, he learns to anesthetize his ―mental busyness, ...obsessive
thinking and ...anxiety‖ (quoted in Lasch, pp. 21-25).
Cushman (1990) notes that
inner emptiness is expressed in many ways in our culture, such as low self-
esteem (the absence of a sense of personal worth), values confusion (the
absence of a sense of personal convictions), eating disorders (the compulsion
to fill the emptiness with food, or to embody the emptiness by refusing food),
drug abuse (the compulsion to fill the emptiness with chemically induced
emotional experience of ―receiving‖ something from the world). It may also
take the form of an absence of personal meaning. This can manifest as a
hunger for spiritual guidance, which sometimes takes the form of a wish to be
filled up by the spirit of God, by religious ―truth,‖ or by the power and
personality of a leader guru (p. 604).
The hunger for spiritual guidance, and relief from varying degrees of despair and fear, is
often what impels people to explore religious and secular self-improvement groups. Yet the
leaders of these groups typically do not attempt to help the seeker explore and make sense
of the difficulties that have led him to seek spiritual consolation or self-improvement.
Rather, the cult leader exploits the seeker‘s emotional vulnerabilities, and seduces the
seeker into a state of dependence. Promising the acquisition of success and power, salvation
and redemption, or relief from frustration and inhibition, the leader persuades the followers
that the leader‘s self-proclaimed perfection can belong to the follower as well. All one must
do is totally embrace the leader‘s ideology. In cults, this always means securing the leader‘s
favor by enthusiastically agreeing to recruit others to the leader‘s program.
While Zweig‘s malaise, referred to above, may provide a recognizable snapshot of the
zeitgeist of his pre-guru days (think Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate), Zweig is also
implicitly referring to the untold story of his own unique psychological history. Yet Zweig
strikingly omits a psychological analysis of his distress, apparently satisfied that the struggle
to make sense of and deal with his despair is rendered unnecessary and irrelevant by the
magical euphoria granted by contact with his guru.
I have found the work of Heinz Kohut, the founder of the school of self psychology, whose
ideas about narcissism have been highly influential, to be particularly useful in thinking
about the allure of cults (see also Kriegman &Solomon, 1985). Kohut coined the term
selfobject to refer to providers, initially parents, of basic psychological functions required by
infants in order for the sense of security, vitality, and connectedness to develop and
consolidate. Dedicated and loving caregivers, using their capacities for empathic
attunement, perform three crucial functions for the developing child‘s sense of self: 1) by
mirroring, taking delight in, the child‘s efforts to connect and be recognized, the child comes
to feel basic self-worth 2) by providing a model of strength and effectiveness the child can
idealize, the child internalizes a sense of security and 3) by encouraging the sense of
belonging and sameness, what Kohut called twinship, the child feels comfortable in and a
part of the human community (not isolated and alienated). The successful collaboration of
parent and child in negotiating these selfobject needs would lead to the child‘s experience of
a firm sense of self as a center of initiative and agency, with the confidence to develop
ambitions and ideals, and to realize them. Good enough selfobject provision is the basis
from which an individual learns to sustain and regulate adequate self-esteem (healthy
narcissism) throughout all the vicissitudes of maturation. Selfobject provision (or more
simply, parenting, when it is children that are being provided for) is by nature empathic and
respectful, as distinguished from the controlling, dominating, scapegoating and/or exploitive
behaviors characteristic of pathologically narcissistic provision.

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Selfobject experience is vitalizing, and provides a sense of connectedness. Different cults
offer different kinds of selfobject experience. One common denominator is the offer of
unconditional love, especially in spiritual groups. Another is the offer of purpose and
meaning. Both of these experiences are vitalizing and can help dispel the sense of
disconnectedness. For those whose development is marked by chronic deprivation of
selfobject experience, or for those even temporarily deprived, the offer of these kinds of
experiences at the right moment of vulnerability can be irresistible. Whether or not
selfobject provision has been adequate in development, humans are potentially vulnerable,
either because of early deprivation, or later due to unforeseen life circumstances, to the
experience of alienation and isolation. When such vulnerability is present, the glamorous,
charismatic cult leader can come to represent for many a longed-for, impossibly perfect
selfobject parent who banishes powerlessness and loneliness.
Another highly seductive idea advertised in meditation-based cults is that ―it is not
necessary to be logical, rational, or even reasonable. The ultimately dominant criterion of
what is good is a totally subjective feeling state. The goal of life becomes a good feeling, a
never-ending high‖ (Garvey, 1993). This is not as hedonistic as it sounds. The search for
this kind of unending happiness is often fueled, consciously or unconsciously, by a sense on
the part of the recruit of unending failure and defeat, in vocational and/or interpersonal
realms of his life. Many, who in their development, have not experienced adequate
selfobject provision, live with a powerful emotional hunger, like that which Zweig describes,
which the cult leader appears ideally suited to satisfy. Loyal members of a cult believe that
their leader has magically transformed their lives and relieved their longing and suffering.
On that basis, they will staunchly defend their leader even when his or her crimes are
exposed. The ―good feeling‖ of their initial conversion experience might consist of feeling
―redeemed,‖ ―coming home at last,‖ having been ―lost, but now found,‖ or being ―saved.‖
These intensely emotional experiences are attributed directly to the power and will of the
leader. In the SYDA group, members were repeatedly instructed to refer all questions and
doubts to their original conversion experience, and to ―trust their own experience‖—
meaning to ignore, discard and feel ashamed about doubts and questions. In this way,
objectivity—e.g., any negative information about the leader—is devalued. The guru, along
with one‘s own subjective feeling state, is idealized. The bunker mentality response to any
critical information about the group and its leaders then becomes: ―That isn‘t my
experience.‖
There are strong reasons for this need to banish objectivity. If one believes that the guru‘s
power has healed one‘s pain and satisfied one‘s hunger, then for some, keeping the pain
from returning means preserving the guru, at any cost. The pain of life that has been
magically erased by the guru may indeed return if one rejects the guru. It may, and often
does, return, along with many other warded off emotions, and these will need to be
experienced, felt, understood, worked through, and made meaningful, if real
transformation, not magic, is to occur. This is part of the complex process of human self-
development that the cult solution can only pretend to address. For many who successfully
exit cults, the process of transformation and expanded self-awareness they sought when
they joined the cult only really begins once they have left the cult.
The history of SYDA provides a good example of how far devotees will go to defend the
person they perceive as their savior. In the early 80s, the Siddha Yoga community was
shocked to learn that Muktananda, a monk in his late 60s and supposedly a lifelong celibate,
had been secretly having sexual relations with western female devotees for at least ten
years. While many women thought of themselves as willing participants, others felt coerced
and traumatized by the experience. Often his victims were female children in their early
teens. Many who were SYDA devotees at the time heard these allegations and ignored
them, in spite of wide acknowledgment among those closest to Muktananda that they were