Are all cult leaders narcissists?

 

Are all cult leaders narcissists?

I was in Scientology for twenty five years.

Answered just now

The word ALL makes this question difficult. It presents the black swan fallacy, meaning that you would need perfect and complete knowledge of EVERY swan in the world and every swan that ever existed or will exist to say with total accuracy that black swans do not EVER exist.

People used to believe that no swans were black in many parts of the world but eventually black swans were found and so the idea that swans are never black was debunked.

You would need a perfect understanding of who is and is not a narcissist and who is a cult leader to answer this question.

The literature on cults makes it clear that cult leaders need the traits of dishonesty and willingness to harm cult members through abuse and exploitation to be cult leaders. I believe Margaret Singer in her book Cults In Our Midst and Daniel Shaw in his book Traumatic Narcissism concur on this point.

But the literature on human predators has no consistent set definitions for the various types. One expert will define terms like narcissist, sociopath, malignant narcissist, and psychopath one way while another will define them in a contradictory way.

There is not a set scientific evidence based definition system, so it is difficult to be accurate.

I think the way that Martha Stout defines these terms in The Sociopath Next Door is helpful personally.

The crux of this point is a person defined as a sociopath and not a narcissist could in theory be a cult leader.