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Also, he established some analogies between addictions and love relationships, where the
addictive object occupies the place of the love object. The idealization of the addictive
object would be the result of confirmation on the part of the individual that the object
provides immediate pleasure or displeasure, which grants the individual a certain sense of
omnipotence in believing he can control emotional states with the idealized object.
The Freudian proposal, therefore, suggests that the addictive relationship would be founded
upon a process of personal attribution that the subject carries out upon the object, and that
it is idiosyncratic in each individual case. We find a sort of bi-directional relation: on the one
hand, an individual who attributes some properties to the substance (or non-toxic object)
on the other hand, a substance (or object) that has differential effects upon the person.
Other psychoanalysts have discussed the idea of drug addiction as a substitute for
satisfaction of unconscious desires, as a defense against states of internal anxiety, as a
result of internal conflict, and even as a result of structural deficiencies of the mental
apparatus (Yorke, 1970).
These hypothesis find certain correlations in the clinical aspects of cultism, where we
observe groups that develop ritualized practices and where the same relationship dynamic
leads to behavioral regressions, to the annulling of repression and the surfacing of very
primitive childhood contents, to alterations of the Super-Ego system with the introduction of
the doctrinal system of the group, to a hypo- manic state within the follower that leads to
omnipotence, and to a relationship with the rest of the group reminiscent of a highly
idealized love relationship.
In the psychoanalytical diagnostic field, the term ―addict‖ does not yield greater clinical
significance, since being addicted to a substance or to a group does not add more
information about the person involved, only about his pathologically dependent state.
According to psychoanalytical hypothesis, addiction is understood in terms of the
relationship between an individual and an object (inert in the case of drugs, alive in the case
of cults).
As seen from a relational viewpoint, the cultic involvement can be understood as
bidirectional addiction: on the one hand, a leader who believes he/she is chosen, and on the
other hand, a follower who ends up wishing to be the chosen leader. The leader thrives on
the grandiosity he looks for followers to make himself grander, and if he is left without
them, he tends to feel empty. The follower comes to trust that the leader will offer the
certainty of absolute conviction. At last, we can consider the leader as the first follower, in
this case, a follower of his own omnipotent fantasies (Perlado, 2002).
Conclusions
The model of addiction allows us to approach the clinical complications of cults from the
outlook of the patient, without forgetting the manipulations that the group produces to
achieve a state of subjection in the follower (Perlado, 2002).
Focusing on cult involvement as a form of addiction does not deny the existence of unethical
influence upon the follower or other psychopathological patterns as a result of thought
reform processes, but it aims to delve into the personal aspects that play a role in these
relationships.
Cultic addiction seems to share numerous characteristics with drug addiction, as well as
with addictions without drugs. From a psychiatric point of view, once the diagnosis of
addiction or no addiction is established, it would seem that the treatment would be standard
for all types of addiction: suppressing the addiction, abstaining from the same, controlling
the factors associated with it, resolving specific problems, preventing relapse, and helping
to compose a new style of living (recovery).

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Exclusively focusing attention on the addictive power of the drug or on the manipulative
potential of the group, however, does not help the patient abandon his attachment any
quicker. In the case of cults, experience has shown that assessment based on information
(exit counseling) helps to unblock the intense dependency, but following this release, it is
necessary to elaborate the problem so as to determine the personal factors that play a role
and the degree of the group manipulation.
Beyond the theory, what interests us in therapeutic terms is to know if, in any given
patient, the addictive relationship is or is not the main problem. Despite all of this,
psychoanalytical professionals continue to debate whether addiction is a primary problem or
a secondary problem.
In the field of cults, experience shows us that in a high proportion of cases, cultic addiction
presents itself as the primary problem among some current members. So that it is pivotal to
resort to initial assessment about the group before designing any kind of psychotherapeutic
treatment.
The patient‘s relational diagnosis, beyond his addictive relationship, will help to better plan
his treatment. In the case of current cult members, it is not the same to propose an exit
counseling intervention on a psychotic patient than on a neurotic one, for example, which is
why it is especially important to dedicate the necessary time to the family in order to be
able to establish an initial relational diagnosis that will subsequently be put to the test with
the cult follower.
With exit counseling procedures, we intend to create a breach of doubt in the follower so
that he will at least entertain the possibility of seeing things from another perspective. In
other addictions, we try to turn the addiction into a symptom in the addict, meaning that he
views what is happening as a problem.
Cultic addiction, as with other types of addictive relationships, is founded on denial and the
absence of symptoms in the analytical sense (there is no experience of uneasiness about
problems that are viewed as such from the outside), so that we must previously carry out
some work with the current member based on exit counseling procedures about groups, in
order to be able to open breaches in the strong defenses that the subject presents, with the
aim of helping him enter into a therapeutic relationship that will offer an opening discussion
of cultic commitment and his internal world.
Enlarging the realm of addictions and relating group addiction with the family of behavioral
or social addictions opens up a new path of approaching the current cult member and in a
field of research which is still in need of further investigations.
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