Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2005, Page 8
The Findings
A Leader who Requires Excessive Devotion
Cults are organized around a leader, typically described as a charismatic individual who
maintains ultimate power and authority over the group. Within the cult the leader is
designated as worthy of devotion and awe because of his or her superior capacity to
comprehend the true nature of reality. Due to this supposed unique and valuable
knowledge, leaders are presented as able to understand members better than they
understand themselves. It is held that through great personal sacrifice, cult leaders are
willing to share this knowledge on behalf of the members who require the wisdom and the
guidance of the leader in order to function. In return, members are expected to reserve
their love and devotion exclusively for the leader, who has earned an elevated place at the
center of their emotional lives. Cult leaders have been compared to both psychopaths
(Tobias &Lalich, 1994) and narcissists (Shaw, 2003) because of their lack of humility in
presenting themselves as superior to others and because of their willingness to use their
charm and persuasion skills in order to exploit and unduly influence others.
The adult children who participated in the interviews described the alienating parent in
similar terms. In particular, they perceived the alienating parent as needing to be the center
of attention at all times and insisting on being the center of the child‘s emotional life. ―She
was the center and everything revolved around her.‖ (31) Another participant said, ―Mainly
I think she always wants to be your everything. She wants to be your center of attention.
And so she liked the fact that by making me hate him all I had was her.‖ (27) In fact, many
of the interview subjects described their parents as narcissistic, either using that label or
using precise descriptors that called that term to mind.
In cults, it is not enough to feel devotion to the leader members are expected to
demonstrate their devotion on a regular basis. Expressions of devotion include putting the
needs of the leader first, never questioning the authority of the leader, confessing
imperfections, allowing the leader to make all important decisions, and making public
declarations of faith and love. These actions reassure the leader that the member is fully
indoctrinated and further solidify the member‘s commitment to the cult (Lifton, 1989). In
many cases the expressions of devotion are public, with the aim of turning a public
declaration of devotion into an inner desire to be loyal to the leader. By requiring such
public assertions of faith and trust in the leader, cult leaders are exploiting the natural
tendency in people to want their beliefs to be consistent with their actions (e.g. Festinger,
1957). In this way saying becomes believing.3
This process also occurred in the families of alienation. The participants reported feeling
pressured to show their devotion to the alienating parent. Many described their relationship
with the alienating parent as one in which their parent‘s needs were felt as more real and
urgent to them than their own. They recalled staying home from social activities to tend to
their parent, to keep them company, to take care of younger siblings, or to perform
household duties. ―I did what I could do to make her life easier because her life was so hard
because of my father. That was my mantra, Mom‘s life is hard. I have to try to help her.‖
(40) They chose friends, hobbies, and eventually careers and spouses to please their
parent. Others reported that they grew up believing that it was their job to satisfy the needs
of their parent, exemplified in the statement, ―I was there to help her. It would make me
want to try harder to please her. I learned how to be amusing at a very young age.‖ (27) In
general, they experienced themselves as extensions of their parent, their primary function
in life being to take care of, please, admire, reassure, and be devoted to them.
A particularly important expression of devotion was an allegiance to and preference for the
alienating parent over the targeted parent. Some of the participants recalled being asked to
spy on the targeted parent and keep secrets from him or her. Many participants said that

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2005, Page 9
they had made negative reports to the alienating parent about the targeted parent such as
saying that they did not have a good time during visits, exaggerating small infractions or
hurts, and making false claims of harm. Joining the alienating parent in the belittling of the
targeted parent was another means of showing devotion. A few participants recalled
mocking the targeted parent, and one told of being encouraged to spit, hit, and sexually
humiliate his mother at the behest of his father. Devotion also took the form of making
accusations against the targeted parent for real and fabricated allegations, including
stealing the child‘s personal items and shirking financial obligations such as child support
payments.
As with cults, loyalty and devotion in alienating families was extracted either through sweet
seduction or through wrathful commands (and usually an alternating sequence of both). An
example of the former was provided by a woman who described her mother and stepfather
as being ―nicer than nice,‖ doing everything for her until she eventually believed, ―that they
were the only ones we could rely on, that we had to be with them.‖ (1) In her family,
demonstrations of loyalty took the form of hiding from her father when he came to visit and
being rude to people in the neighborhood that her mother and stepfather singled out as
being worthy of contempt. Another woman recalled her mother saying, ―Don‘t you want to
stay here with me and your sister? Your sister understands that to go over there is to go
with people who don‘t like me. I am your mother don‘t you want to like me?‖ (33) Through
a combination of rhetorical skill and guilt inducement this mother compelled her daughter to
reject her father.
At the other end of the spectrum of strategies for extracting loyalty was a young man who
grew up with a raging drunken father. He explained that, ―There was a constant ritual every
day. He would come in my room in the middle of the night and make me profess my faith to
him and if I didn‘t and if I didn‘t stay away from everybody else that he was going to kill
himself. He would do this and I would have nobody.‖ (17) And one woman reported that her
father wanted her to profess her exclusive love for him, and would beat her until she did so.
Many participants reported having to constantly reassure their alienating parents that they
loved them best of all, and that they did not in fact have positive feelings for the targeted
parent. ―She‘d start crying and say we didn‘t love her and that‘s just how she is.‖ (36)
The ultimate sign of devotion and loyalty to a cult leader entails renouncing all other
sources of influence. Just as cult leaders require an exclusive place in the hearts and minds
of the members, these alienating parents seemed to want to have sole claim on their
children. Allegiance to the other parent was not allowed in these families and the
participants understood that there was to be an exclusive and all encompassing relationship
with only one parent. They were made to feel that any contact with the targeted parent was
a betrayal of the worst kind. One man said of his mother, ―If I talked about my dad it was
like sticking a knife in her back.‖ (9) Another said he felt like a traitor when he came back
from a visit. Ultimately, many of the participants were encouraged if not coerced to
renounce their relationship with the targeted parent. Loving both parents would have been
unthinkable, just as belonging to two cults at the same time is not possible. And in this way,
many of the participants felt that they had to make a choice between their parents.
Naturally, they chose the parent whom they believed really loved them and was able to take
care of them, the one who had been telling them all along that the other parent was unsafe,
worthy of contempt, and did not even love them in return. In time, most of the participants
were turned against the targeted parent completely, withdrawing their love and natural
affection for them. More than one made a comment such as, ―I remember thinking he
should go ahead and die. I wish he‘d just go get in a car accident. I wish he‘d die. I didn‘t
want him to come home.‖ (22) Another said, ―I did believe her that he was a terrible rotten
person who beat my mother and thank god she divorced him.‖ (16) The intensity of these
and other similar statements reflect the utter lack of ambivalence, (one parent is all good