Sunday, March 7, 2021

What is the relationship between narcissism and fringe cult leadership?

 

I think the most direct answers to this question are found in two books: Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein and Traumatic Narcissism by Daniel Shaw. They both describe the relationship between a cult leader and the followers in fine detail and the mindset of the cult leader in terms regarding the dynamics of this relationship.

The ideas put forth by these cult experts in these excellent books explain in very clear terms how the cult leader acts as a human predator, known in much of the literature as a malignant narcissist, or in Shaw's terms a traumatizing narcissist, and uses the people following them in an abusive relationship.

Cult expert Margaret Singer said that to be a cult leader you must be willing to lie to people and to exploit people. She meant in my opinion you must be willing to harm them, to traumatize them, to cultivate trust then betray that trust. Her book Cults In Our Midst described this quite well.

I also think that Robert Jay Lifton described this quite well in numerous books including his latest, Losing Reality.

Here are blog posts related to this topic:

In Depth Analysis of Books and Videos

How Cults Work 1 - A New Look
I have written many posts online about cults and taken on many separate aspects of cults in the past few years. This post is going to be dif...
How Cults Work 2 - First Things First
This is the second post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. In her book she starts out by ...
How Cults Work 3 - Totalist Group Structure
This is the third post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. This post picks up at the topic...
How Cults Work 4 - The Brainwashing Process and Outcomes
This is the fourth post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. In this we now take on the bra...
How Cults Work 5 - Attachment Theory
This is the fifth post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. In this post we zero in on atta...
How Cults Work 6 - Forms Of Attachment
This is the sixth post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. In this post we can examine how...
How Cults Work 7 - Disorganized Attachment and Dissociation
This is the seventh post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. In this post we take on two c...
How Cults Work 8 - Recruitment
This is the eighth post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. In the third chapter of Terror...
How Cults Work 9 - Undue Influence In Recruitment
How Cults Work - Undue Influence In Recruitment This is the ninth post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by ...
How Cults Work 10 - Totalist Indoctrination
How Cults Work - Totalist Indoctrination This is the tenth post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexand...
How Cults Work 11 - Fright Without Solution
This is the eleventh post in a series dedicated to the book Terror, Love and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein. Stein described the totalist...
Cults In Our Midst Part 1
      "The public takes care of their fear by thinking only crazies and stupid people wind up in cults. I've interviewed over 4000 ...
Traumatic Narcissism: part 1 Scientology and Hubbard
I have seen the extraordinary cult expert Doctor Daniel Shaw in several YouTube videos and read several online articles by him including an ...
Traumatic Narcissism part 2: The Relationships in Scientology
This series references the book Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation by Doctor Daniel Shaw. All quotes referenced are fro...

Several more posts are available at Mockingbird's Nest blog on Scientology.

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