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self-promoter can con the media into thinking they‟re [sic] someone else and
build a reputation on it … But this is a tragedy based on people‟s lives, and
everyone I‟ve talked to is still carrying around this burden.” (Baldacchi, Sept.
16, 1990, p. 5)
In the example of the Orthogenic School, the individuals labeled as “autistic” conformed to
the paradigm of being so narcissistically deprived that, like the followers of the Guru
Maharaj Ji, they are
...persons who have suffered such trauma (as adolescents and adults) that they
are forever attempting to achieve a union with the idealized object ...Their
narcissistic equilibrium is safeguarded only through the interest, the responses,
and the approval of present-day (i.e., currently active) replicas of the
traumatically lost selfobject. (Kriegman &Solomon, 1985, p. 139)
This study by Kriegman and Solomon on followers of the Guru Maharaj Ji confirms the work
of others (Halperin, 1990 Markowitz, 1983) highlighting the extent to which cult affiliation
may be part of a reparative process. The relationship between the cult leader and the cult
member parallels the development of an intense dependency relationship between the
leader/director of the residential treatment center and the residents and/or staff. The extent
to which charismatic leadership lends itself to being utilized as part of a reparative process
should not blind us to the possibility that this same creative resource may also lend itself to
a species of malignant degeneration and regression. This malignant process, which has the
capacity to transform a treatment center such as the Orthogenic School into a cult-like
setting, is accelerated when the director begins to accept uncritically the overvaluation of
him or her by either staff or residents (Halperin, 1983b).K
The Director of the Residential Treatment Center:
Organizational Considerations
The director of the residential treatment center exercises a multiplicity of roles. On one
level, he or she mediates between the conflicting hierarchies that comprise a residence.
And, in the role of preeminent definer of boundaries, the director creates a climate that
encourages the exploration of both positive and negative transferential and
countertransferential distortion (Kernberg, 1973). In this context, a significant aspect of
limit-setting is to restrict the duration of a resident‟s stay at the center. Residents should be
encouraged to leave the residence and to live independently after discharge. Termination is
a complex decision (Halperin, 1986). Unfortunately, relatively few residents reach a point
where further treatment after discharge is unnecessary. The development of a “floating”
therapeutic community of former residents dropping in to socialize with current residents
and staff preserves a diluted therapeutic relationship with the center and is characteristic.
However, when the center begins to postpone discharge, presenting to residents the implicit
message that discharge and termination are fearful, destructive experiences, the conditions
described by Temerlin and Temerlin (1982) are approximated:
Patients also dreaded the consequences of termination without approval of the
therapist because of fantasies --which the therapist often provided --of
personal or professional destruction should they leave the group, which bears a
remarkable resemblance to some of the techniques of thought reform and
brainwashing … Cult membership converted psychotherapy from an ego-building
process of individuation into an infantilizing and destructive religion, which these
people could no more leave than most people can leave the religion of their
youth. (p. 139)
In a residential treatment setting, both staff and residents often face monumental demands
for change and growth. At the time of termination, the staff‟s need for magic to achieve

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1991, Page 39
overwhelming goals is exacerbated. The director may respond to the needs of staff and
residents by overvaluing his ability to “treat the untreatable.” Under the pressure of this
group fantasy, especially when it conforms to their own narcissistic needs, directors may
gradually begin to exclude from the decision-making process those staff members who do
not share their pretensions. They may accuse dissenters of being unnecessarily competitive
when their sole “flaw” is their independence, integrity, and/or desire to retain respect for
their past training. In the Orthogenic School, for example, the director advanced to the use
of brutality to treat those individuals who were essentially organically impaired and would
maintain his public image by defining as autistic those who were otherwise treatable, hailing
their recovery as an example of his ability to treat autism.
In the cult-like residential treatment setting, directors promote individuals without training
because of their need to surround themselves with sycophants. Directors rationalize such
capricious promotions as examples of their willingness to promote the “specially gifted” or
the “innately talented” and of their refusal to be bound by “archaic” and/or “bureaucratic”
credentialing requirements. Thus, the head of the Sullivanian Institute was formerly the
registrar in an analytic training institute (not a student), and the training analysts in the
Sullivanian Institute are often individuals without formal training in mental health sciences
or in psychoanalysis. In such an environment, the director may adopt the more subtly
destructive policy of alluding to any criticism as an example of the staff member‟s
“unresolved problems.” If a staff member questions the absence of appropriate boundaries
between the director and a resident (which may include financial and/or sexual
exploitation), the director will interpret this as an example of the staff member‟s
competitiveness stemming from his unresolved “Oedipal conflicts.”
Staff members may be subjected to confrontational sessions characterized by humiliating
and intrusive scrutiny to help them “work through” their “transference.” Ultimately, the staff
members who remain within this setting do so on the basis of shame rather than conviction.
They may even be encouraged to enter into “psychoanalysis” with the director or senior
members of the center‟s hierarchy to “resolve” their “problems.” The presence of an internal
climate indicates the growing encapsulation of the center from the outside world and the
heightened potential for or the presence of a cultic evolution. Although a wide variety of
financial and quasitherapeutic rationalizations may be advanced in support of this growing
isolation, the end product is an increasingly incestuous treatment setting in which both staff
and residents are deprived of meaningful opportunities for growth.
The director is responsible for setting the tone for the enforcement of discipline within the
residential treatment center. Streiker (1984), for example, reported that cases in Arkansas
and Florida questioned the state‟s right to regulate discipline within child-care facilities. In
both states, residential centers were maintained by fundamentalist religious groups that had
resorted to corporal punishment. When, in Arkansas, the state rescinded a rule that
permitted spanking in child-care facilities, these groups opposed the state‟s action. As one
group leader said, “We believe that we are mandated by our faith...to spank” (Streiker,
1984, p. 96). A more dramatic case is that of the Rebehak Home operated by Lester Roloff.
According to the charges, residents were paddled and whipped for misbehavior. Roloff
claimed that “such discipline was meant to save their souls … There‟s nothing wrong with
handcuffing a girl to keep her from going to hell” (Streiker, 1984, p. 98).
More recently, the Ecclesia case in Oregon demonstrates the potential for death in facilities
where the leader‟s need to impose discipline for trivial offenses overrode any sense of
paternity or compassion (Thompson, June 1, 1990). And, as the Orthogenic School
illustrates, the desire to abuse physically is not limited to fundamentalists. One can only
fear for children in facilities that operate under religious and/or therapeutic auspices without
appropriate supervision.