Social Question
How can parents best cult-proof their children?
Malignant pied pipers like Charles Manson were able to attract a faithful following of teens and young adults to themselves because young people seeking to break away from their parents and establish their own identities (a normally healthy impulse) found their weirdness and charismatically iconoclastic behavior seductive. Such acting out seemed a perfect rejection of what their parents stood for, and the ills they rightly recognized in the “gentile society” around them.
How can parents rear their children so that, when the time comes for them to begin shedding parental bonds, they are already well prepared to spot abusive individuals suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder complicated by Malignant Narcissism for the dangerous monsters they actually are instead of the loving father figures they pretend to be?
For purposes of this question, I am using the DSM IV definition for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
While the diagnosis remains disputed, I am using for this question the definition of Malignant Narcissism given by Otto F. Kernberg, MD, FAPA; who listed these four traits on page 195 of his book, Severe Personality Disorders: Psycho-Therapeutic Strategies, 1986.
1 — Paranoid regressive tendencies with “paranoid micro psychotic episodes.” These brief episodes of narcissistic rage involve loss of contact with reality and serve the function of punishing external enemies in order to avoid internal pain.
2 — Chronic self-destructiveness or suicidal behavior as a triumph over authority figures. The malignant narcissist makes empathic followers or family feel his own hurt by initially seducing but eventually hurting them. Malignant pied pipers do this to their followers and even to their own children.
3 — Major and minor dishonesty (psychopathy). Malignant narcissists manipulate and exploit others for profit, for their own satisfaction, or for imagined glory.
4 — Malignant grandiosity with overt sadistic efforts to triumph over all authority. This triumph represents a satisfying turning of the tables for the malignant narcissist who, for instance, may have been abandoned without remorse by his father. By killing or vanquishing authority, the malignant narcissist feels as though he has achieved revenge against his uncaring father.
Kernberg adopts the term malignant because this disorder, once established in an individual, grows like an aggressive cancer till it ends in death or self and followers, as it did with cult leaders like Jim Jones and David Koresh; or for murder of selected cult members and innocent third parties, as in the case of Charles Manson and Japan’s Shoko Asahara.
Composing members:
0
9 Answers
