Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2006, Page 102
easy for a victim of abuse to remain silent, rather than deal with the shaming, blaming and
doubting that often greets them when they find the courage to make public their abuse. The
Cult Clinic of the Jewish Board of Family and Children‘s Services in New York helped counsel
traumatized members who left the group, and helped divorced spouses and family members
of Sullivanian patients organize support groups. Beyond that, the professional mental health
community was silent. The absence of any serious psychoanalytic writing on the Sullivanians
suggests that there has been a dismissal, a turning away from the stories these former
members tell. It may be that, for the psychoanalytic community, for those who knew what
was happening, it was easier to minimize, doubt and dismiss the testimony of the members
of the group than it would have been to confront and acknowledge how seriously deranged
Pearce, Newton and Harvey, and their trainees, actually became. Pearce was, after all, a
highly respected student of H. S. Sullivan‘s before she severed her ties to the White
Institute. While sexual violations in psychotherapy have been well studied by
psychoanalysts (e.g., Celenza, 1995 Celenza and Gabbard, 2003), therapy cults have not.
Perhaps the concreteness of sexual violation makes it easier to grasp and repudiate than
the dynamics of sadistic control and domination between therapist and patient, which can
be enacted more subtly and be therefore less obviously transgressive.
In considering the Sullivanians, it may be tempting for us to focus on the analysis of the
pathology of the followers, whom we might identify as the patient in this kind of story.
While further study in this area would certainly be beneficial (see Shaw, 2003), we should
not allow a focus on pathology in followers to obscure the more pressing issue for our
profession: to understand the psychology of the therapist who exerts abusive, totalitarian
control over a patient, or a group of patients. I present the following as an initial foray into
this area, in the hope of generating further interest in this subject.
Siskind quotes accounts from former followers of Newton and Harvey indicating they lived in
constant fear that the psychological illness diagnosed by their therapists would never end
unless they gave themselves over completely and allowed their therapists total control of
their lives. Why would a therapist need or want to put a patient in this position? Although
Siskind provides a sociological perspective on the Sullivanians, I believe this book can be
particularly valuable for the psychoanalytic profession as a resource for the study of the
destructive effects of pathological narcissism in our work, which is the lens through which I
think these issues can best be perceived and comprehended. Based on theoretical
formulations from my own work over the last ten years with former members of cultic
groups, including the study of cult leaders (Shaw, 2003), I have suggested that malignant
narcissists who promote a cult around themselves succeed in enslaving their followers
through seduction, intimidation, and humiliation. Their narcissism compels them to deny
and expel their own self-loathing, fear and shame, which is the result of their own traumatic
upbringing. They typically rewrite their histories, creating heroic, triumphant pasts,
reversing the impotence and humiliation they actually experienced. Desperate to evacuate
his shame, the malignant narcissist contrives to elicit and reinforce self-loathing, fear, and
shame in another, or many others, thereby ―passing the hot potato,‖ insuring that these
despicable defects and weaknesses are located and kept under control in an external other.
The narcissist then obsessively corrects and punishes the other as a means of assuring
himself that the shameful defects are taken on by the other, and thereby kept externalized.
For the malignant narcissist to claim these defects as his own would mean unbearable
mortification, which must be avoided at any cost. By making followers highly anxious about
their status at all times, the narcissistic group leader is able to keep them dependent and
afraid to leave. The followers accept endless shaming, belittling, intimidation, and
scapegoating as the price of remaining in the leader‘s good graces on the road to
purification and enlightenment. In so doing, the leader effectively conceals, as Elaine May
was unable to do in the comedy sketch, the desperation and shame connected to his own
underlying pathological dependency. Instead of conveying the message of May‘s analyst to
easy for a victim of abuse to remain silent, rather than deal with the shaming, blaming and
doubting that often greets them when they find the courage to make public their abuse. The
Cult Clinic of the Jewish Board of Family and Children‘s Services in New York helped counsel
traumatized members who left the group, and helped divorced spouses and family members
of Sullivanian patients organize support groups. Beyond that, the professional mental health
community was silent. The absence of any serious psychoanalytic writing on the Sullivanians
suggests that there has been a dismissal, a turning away from the stories these former
members tell. It may be that, for the psychoanalytic community, for those who knew what
was happening, it was easier to minimize, doubt and dismiss the testimony of the members
of the group than it would have been to confront and acknowledge how seriously deranged
Pearce, Newton and Harvey, and their trainees, actually became. Pearce was, after all, a
highly respected student of H. S. Sullivan‘s before she severed her ties to the White
Institute. While sexual violations in psychotherapy have been well studied by
psychoanalysts (e.g., Celenza, 1995 Celenza and Gabbard, 2003), therapy cults have not.
Perhaps the concreteness of sexual violation makes it easier to grasp and repudiate than
the dynamics of sadistic control and domination between therapist and patient, which can
be enacted more subtly and be therefore less obviously transgressive.
In considering the Sullivanians, it may be tempting for us to focus on the analysis of the
pathology of the followers, whom we might identify as the patient in this kind of story.
While further study in this area would certainly be beneficial (see Shaw, 2003), we should
not allow a focus on pathology in followers to obscure the more pressing issue for our
profession: to understand the psychology of the therapist who exerts abusive, totalitarian
control over a patient, or a group of patients. I present the following as an initial foray into
this area, in the hope of generating further interest in this subject.
Siskind quotes accounts from former followers of Newton and Harvey indicating they lived in
constant fear that the psychological illness diagnosed by their therapists would never end
unless they gave themselves over completely and allowed their therapists total control of
their lives. Why would a therapist need or want to put a patient in this position? Although
Siskind provides a sociological perspective on the Sullivanians, I believe this book can be
particularly valuable for the psychoanalytic profession as a resource for the study of the
destructive effects of pathological narcissism in our work, which is the lens through which I
think these issues can best be perceived and comprehended. Based on theoretical
formulations from my own work over the last ten years with former members of cultic
groups, including the study of cult leaders (Shaw, 2003), I have suggested that malignant
narcissists who promote a cult around themselves succeed in enslaving their followers
through seduction, intimidation, and humiliation. Their narcissism compels them to deny
and expel their own self-loathing, fear and shame, which is the result of their own traumatic
upbringing. They typically rewrite their histories, creating heroic, triumphant pasts,
reversing the impotence and humiliation they actually experienced. Desperate to evacuate
his shame, the malignant narcissist contrives to elicit and reinforce self-loathing, fear, and
shame in another, or many others, thereby ―passing the hot potato,‖ insuring that these
despicable defects and weaknesses are located and kept under control in an external other.
The narcissist then obsessively corrects and punishes the other as a means of assuring
himself that the shameful defects are taken on by the other, and thereby kept externalized.
For the malignant narcissist to claim these defects as his own would mean unbearable
mortification, which must be avoided at any cost. By making followers highly anxious about
their status at all times, the narcissistic group leader is able to keep them dependent and
afraid to leave. The followers accept endless shaming, belittling, intimidation, and
scapegoating as the price of remaining in the leader‘s good graces on the road to
purification and enlightenment. In so doing, the leader effectively conceals, as Elaine May
was unable to do in the comedy sketch, the desperation and shame connected to his own
underlying pathological dependency. Instead of conveying the message of May‘s analyst to
