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is highly susceptible to environmental influences as a result of parental de-identification.
Therefore, this is a time of life that the group or group leader can have a powerful influence.
Adolescents and young adults also are in a period of transition and may desire a sense of
community and acceptance at a time in their life when they are experiencing uncertainty
and/or anxiety about their identities and their futures. Therefore, this is a stage of
development wherein group membership and the new identifications made with group
members can be a progressive step of separation from the object, of childhood. As
mentioned previously, an adolescent becomes particularly vulnerable to cult recruitment at
a time when he or she is dealing with external and/or internal losses. Those who are
particularly susceptible to groups that turn out to be cults are typically those who are in
order to attack the recruits‘ identity and belief system and (6) pressuring recruits to meet a
new standard of perfection. These influence techniques attack the recruit‘s identity
structure, formed from identifications made with important figures in the recruit‘s life. That
is, without conscious awareness of this process, individuals are induced to let go of their
original identity and take on a new cultic identity and, by doing so, enter into a dissociative
state. This cultic identity enables the recruit to better cope with this recruitment process.
In viewing this situation psycho dynamically, it could be said that with the absence of an
anchor in the past, recruits defend against feeling anxious, overwhelmed, exhausted, and
confused by forming an identification with the cult leader—identification with the aggressor.
Anna Freud coined ―identification with the aggressor‖ in The Ego and the Mechanisms of
Defense, to describe how a child ―introjects some characteristic of an anxiety object and so
assimilates an anxiety experience which he has just undergone‖ (Freud, 1966, p. 113). This
defense was not only used to describe a process of childhood, but was seen as a defensive
maneuver used at later periods of life when the individual was undergoing high levels of
stress. For example, the defense of identification with the aggressor was later used to
understand how Jews imprisoned in concentration camps sought out discarded insignias and
torn shreds of SS uniforms with which to adorn their rags (West and Martin, 1994).
If this process is prolonged, the new cultic personality, initially formed as a role played in
response to stressful circumstances, will be superimposed upon the original personality
which, while not completely forgotten, will be enveloped within the shell of the new cultic
personality (West and Martin, 1994). This new cultic identification encapsulates the general
regression that occurs in recruits to cults. The pre-oedipal cult world is seen as black and
white and objects as good and evil. This view, which defines the cult world as the only true
path and the outside world (often including family and friends) as satanic, further binds the
recruit to the cult. This also has implications for memory of past relationships and events.
Typically, over time, life prior to the cult begins to be seen in a more negative light.
Furthermore, there is a sense of omnipotence gained by sharing with the all-powerful cult
leader (mother). This sense of omnipotence is experienced as euphoria by the recruit. The
boundaries have blurred and the recruit‘s sense of individuality is weakened.
Cult members become aware of the positive effect of belonging to a single-minded
community. Whitsett describes how this sense of belonging can be used as a powerful tool
to keep recruits in cults (Whitsett, pp. 363-375). However, the pressure for uniformity has a
regressive influence on the ego, precluding any type of critical assessment of this coercive
and highly suggestive experience. Recruits are actively discouraged from differentiating
their own thoughts and feelings from those of the group. This single-mindedness is
reinforced through a strict system of reward and punishment. There is constant pressure to
be obedient to the cult leader. If recruits have doubts or go against the cult leader‘s wishes,
they are humiliated or, worse, threatened with excommunication—which cult members
come to believe is being damned to Hell. Furthermore, their doubt is defined as a reflection
of their personal problems, not as reflection of deficiencies within the leader or the ideology,
Therefore, by punishing any expression of doubt, the leader induces cult members to

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become more and more dependent on receiving his approval through obedient behavior. In
this way, ego functions that interfere with group functions are attacked and diminished. The
cult member becomes child-like and suggestible. Therefore, in order to continue to feel good
the recruit must continually be locked into an idealizing transference the cult leader, which
never ends and never is interpreted.
It was understandable how anti-social and/or narcissistic cult leaders will use suggestion of
childhood sexual abuse as a technique for further separating cult members from their
parents. It was harder to understand how well-meaning therapists could suggest this to
their patients. The suspicion is that some therapists are not aware of how much influence
they have over their patients. Only a very small minority of therapists consciously and
deceptively employs some of the techniques used by cult leaders. However, there is a
continuum of influence and, although therapists do not have the degree of influence over
patients that cult leaders have over their followers, all therapists should recognize that their
behavior and attitudes do have some degree of influence on their patients. Before this
concept is developed further, an historical overview of recovered memories will be explored.
Historical Overview of Recovered Memories
In the late nineteenth century, while working with his first patients, who were displaying
hysterical symptoms, Freud suspected that the causative factors for these symptoms were
sexual seductions from early childhood. When his patients reported recovered memories of
childhood sexual seductions, he believed them without qualification (Freud, 1893-1895).
However, in analyzing his own dreams, investigating children‘s behavior, and in gaining an
appreciation of the power of transference, it became clear to Freud that human behavior
was much more complex than he had originally believed. Freud began to theorize that
memory could be influenced by unconscious sexual and aggressive fantasies. He noted that
hysterical symptoms, like dreams, represented fantasized wishes and conflicts about these
wishes rather than only traumatic memories. Symptoms were based on psychic reality
rather than simply objective reality. Therefore, he considered the possibility that some—not
all—childhood memories were screen memories rather than being historical in every detail.
Freud developed the more complex theory that children have sexual as well as aggressive
feelings from early life and these basic feelings stimulate fantasies and, therefore, can have
an impact on memory. Freud never abandoned the idea that children could be, and often
were, sexually abused. However, Freud began to credit children with a complex mental
capacity by recognizing their ability to wish, invent, and fantasize, and he recognized that
this ability shaped and influenced memory (Freud, 1905).
Freud developed the seduction theory prior to his formulation of his ideas about
transference. As he developed his ideas about transference, he further was able to see how
transference reactions could influence historical reports. That is, he began to consider that
some of his patients, under sway of positive transference feelings, might unconsciously be
reporting material that they felt would please him and, therefore, give him the material for
which they felt he was looking. Along with this insight, Freud began to see transference
reactions as a defense against conscious awareness of intrapsychic conflicts. Therefore, for
Freud, identifying and understanding transference reactions became a central route along
with dreams, to gaining an understanding of the patient‘s true history. Unfortunately, many
in the mental health community viewed Freud‘s insights as an indication that all memories
of childhood sexual experiences were fantasies. There was a tendency for many clinicians to
look intrapsychically to the exclusion of outward reality. This attitude led to the mental
health community‘s virtual abandonment of victims of childhood sexual abuse.
One of the positive outgrowths of the feminist movement in the ‗70s and ‗80s was the
exposure of the reality of spousal and child abuse. Women talking to one another in groups
shared painful experiences of abuse. They demanded services for abused women and