This excerpt from Daniel Shaw's essay is worth a closer look.
Depending on the context, one can substitute "batterer", "dictator" "captor"
for "cult leader".
*Examples of delusions of omnipotence:
* A guru or avatar who goes into trances or retreats and claims to work on higher planes to influence world affairs. One guru reportedly liked to go to the movies and claimed that while doing so, he was doing work to assist the spiritual welfare of the theatre audience. Another guru One guru claimed to get special messages from Francis of Assisi.
See Footnote #1
1 (A common example of a mortifying life history. Girls and women have their own nortifying experiences, leading some to become bullies. Here is given a description of a scenario in India, as India is where many gurus, avatars and godmen are manufactured and exported).
In India and many cultures, the oldest or most talented boy will be selected by the family as the one who will by their sacrifices, get an education, a lucrative job, marry well and raise them to prosperity. If the father of the family is absent, ailing, or has faltered, the pressure on the selected son will be all the greater. The parents will borrow, budget, sacrifice themselves so they can send their savior son to school for an elite education. This is a heavy burden for a sensitive boy or young man. (See Suketu Mehta's description here .It is culturally taboo for this young person to resent the pressure. It is taboo to want to escape from that burden. But a psychosomatic crisis in which one goes mute, goes into trances especially after meeting a holy person can, subconsciously become a means of escape from the family burden.
In his book, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors,
Sudhir Kakar tells of a a young man, under exactly this family pressure, who became mute and went into trances. Instead of being recognized at the current Avatar of the Age, he received sympathetic medical attention. but
at a price of becoming a guru, enforced celibacy and the requirement to pretend
to not have ordinary human needs and desires. The shame of having deserted the family may lead this person to use the guru role to acquire wealth and celebrity to assist his family and off set having emasculated himself.
The guru may claim to know all the secrets of the universe and be Avatar of the Age, yet have a multitude of hangups that he cannot acknowledge. He will take this out on disciples in bursts of rage rationalised as enlightened teaching. Any self loathing felt by the guru will be extruded outwards like a psychic turd then smeared onto luckless disciples.
A male guru who when young may have been the hope of his family. When just a boy he would have been the one for whom the family made sacrifices to prepare him for a lucrative career and adventageous marriage so he could support them in their old age. A young man thus burdened might find it all too much to cope with. Consciously wishing to drop out of college or do coursework in humanities rather than technology might trigger trance illnesses that provide a socially permissible career change to that of holy man.
Footnote #2 A disciple or several disciples may become the designated scapegoats, fall into the guru's disfavor and be singled out by him for degradation in front of the other disciples. Andrew Cohen reportedly did this to many of his disciples, sending some off in disgrace to distant assignments. Other times disciples who were in disgrace volunteered to abase themselves in penance.
Footnote #3 Andrew Cohen commended students to abuse other students, degrading themselves along with the targeted victim.
Depending on the context, one can substitute "batterer", "dictator" "captor"
for "cult leader".
Quote
"... from a psychoanalytic perspective, the cult leader unconsciously experiences his dependency needs as so deeply shameful that a delusion of omnipotence is developed to ward off the toxic shame.
It is urgent to the pathological narcissist, who knows unconsciously that he is susceptible to extreme mortification (the sense of "death" by shame), that this delusion of omnipotence be sustained.
Manic defenses help sustain the delusion, but in addition, followers must be seduced and controlled so that the loathsome dependence can be externalized, located in others and thereby made controllable. The leader can then express his unconscious self-loathing through his "compassion" (often thinly disguised contempt) for his followers’ weakness. Manically proclaiming his own perfection, the leader creates a program of "purification" for the follower.
By enlisting the follower to hold the shame that he projects and evacuates from his own psyche, the cult leader rids himself of all shame, becoming, in effect, "shameless." He defines his shamelessness as enlightenment, liberation, or self-actualization.
It becomes important to the cult leader, for the maintenance of his state of shamelessness on which his psychic equilibrium depends, that there be no competition, that he alone, and no one else in the group, feels shameless.
So while apparently inviting others to attain his state of perfection (shamelessness) by following him, the cult leader is actually constantly involved in inducing shame in his followers, thereby maintaining his dominance and control"
*Examples of delusions of omnipotence:
* A guru or avatar who goes into trances or retreats and claims to work on higher planes to influence world affairs. One guru reportedly liked to go to the movies and claimed that while doing so, he was doing work to assist the spiritual welfare of the theatre audience. Another guru One guru claimed to get special messages from Francis of Assisi.
See Footnote #1
1 (A common example of a mortifying life history. Girls and women have their own nortifying experiences, leading some to become bullies. Here is given a description of a scenario in India, as India is where many gurus, avatars and godmen are manufactured and exported).
In India and many cultures, the oldest or most talented boy will be selected by the family as the one who will by their sacrifices, get an education, a lucrative job, marry well and raise them to prosperity. If the father of the family is absent, ailing, or has faltered, the pressure on the selected son will be all the greater. The parents will borrow, budget, sacrifice themselves so they can send their savior son to school for an elite education. This is a heavy burden for a sensitive boy or young man. (See Suketu Mehta's description here .It is culturally taboo for this young person to resent the pressure. It is taboo to want to escape from that burden. But a psychosomatic crisis in which one goes mute, goes into trances especially after meeting a holy person can, subconsciously become a means of escape from the family burden.
In his book, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors,
Sudhir Kakar tells of a a young man, under exactly this family pressure, who became mute and went into trances. Instead of being recognized at the current Avatar of the Age, he received sympathetic medical attention. but
at a price of becoming a guru, enforced celibacy and the requirement to pretend
to not have ordinary human needs and desires. The shame of having deserted the family may lead this person to use the guru role to acquire wealth and celebrity to assist his family and off set having emasculated himself.
The guru may claim to know all the secrets of the universe and be Avatar of the Age, yet have a multitude of hangups that he cannot acknowledge. He will take this out on disciples in bursts of rage rationalised as enlightened teaching. Any self loathing felt by the guru will be extruded outwards like a psychic turd then smeared onto luckless disciples.
A male guru who when young may have been the hope of his family. When just a boy he would have been the one for whom the family made sacrifices to prepare him for a lucrative career and adventageous marriage so he could support them in their old age. A young man thus burdened might find it all too much to cope with. Consciously wishing to drop out of college or do coursework in humanities rather than technology might trigger trance illnesses that provide a socially permissible career change to that of holy man.
Footnote #2 A disciple or several disciples may become the designated scapegoats, fall into the guru's disfavor and be singled out by him for degradation in front of the other disciples. Andrew Cohen reportedly did this to many of his disciples, sending some off in disgrace to distant assignments. Other times disciples who were in disgrace volunteered to abase themselves in penance.
Footnote #3 Andrew Cohen commended students to abuse other students, degrading themselves along with the targeted victim.