The moralistic narcissist’s impact on the conscience of followers

This article was originally published in ICSA Today, Volume 15, No. 1, 2024

In previous articles, I have written about how cult leaders influence the moral code of cult members. In this paper, I will focus on the dynamics of the moral relationship between cult members and their leader, specifically the methods leaders use to influence the morality and hence the the conscience of their followers. While first-generation recruits may be seduced to change their morality, and those who are born and raised in cults develop a distorted morality, both share the experience of a conscience made harsh by the unnatural demands of the cult leader’s belief system. I will define these types of cult leaders as “moralistic narcissists.” I also will discuss the nature of the moral injury followers sustain in a cult and some ways the cult-created conscience and moral injury may impact former group members after leaving a cult. I will also discuss how the therapist might help them understand and recover from this experience.

Katie: A life illustration

In 2012, I wrote “Influence of a Charismatic Antisocial Cult Leader: Psychotherapy with an Ex-Cultist Prosecuted for Criminal Behavior,” in which I described my therapeutic work with “Katie.” Katie, a former member of a small, new-age cult, had served time in jail after being sentenced on fraud and conspiracy charges stemming from acts she committed while a cult member.

In response to the urging of her leader, Katie had convinced other members to borrow money for student loans, the proceeds of which were never for payment for their education but were given to the leader. When several members left the group, they realized they were burdened with repaying large amounts to the government, and they reported their cult exploitation to the state attorney general’s office. The state forgave the loans and—armed with the former members’ testimony—prosecuted Katie and her leader for fraud and conspiracy.

During the trial, the attorney general’s office gave evidence of the mind-controlling nature of the group and how the leader and Katie had made the members believe that this fraudulent action was warranted because it served the higher purpose of the cult. As one of the women chosen for the leader’s top echelon and someone who had become an attorney at the leader’s request, Katie had been given sole responsibility for coordinating this plan.

At the beginning of the trial, she viewed her leader as a saintly figure who needed protection. In the cult, a partnership between Katie and her leader had developed as the leader promised Katie a glorious life and the opportunity to become a part of something greater than herself. However, in reality, the leader and Katie played out a drama of increasing subjugation for Katie and increasing domination for her leader. Although her leader drew Katie into this seemingly glorious partnership, when she listened to testimony at the trial and with time and space away from her leader, the relationship was extinguished. Katie began to see that instead of a life of self-mastery and freedom she had surrendered her autonomy and conscience to a crook who had deceived and exploited her.

When I met Katie, she appeared depleted, somewhat emotionally detached, and filled with shame. She was considerably different from the confident woman driven by a dedication to her leader whom other former members of her cult had described to me.

In our first session, I asked Katie why she decided to see me. She said that she was distraught and wanted a better understanding of how her morals in the group had contrasted so greatly with those she held before she joined.

In our early sessions, I discovered that Katie had grown up in a Catholic home in Connecticut, the oldest of five children. She described her father as a hard-working, successful businessman and her mother as a housewife and devoted mother. Katie attended parochial school and believed she was a good daughter, pleasing both parents and teachers and serving as a model for her younger siblings. She explained that she clearly understood right and wrong before her cult involvement.

Katie viewed her pre-cult behavior as somewhat idealistic, perfectionist, and unquestioning. She added wistfully, “Perhaps I was naïve.” Her remark indicated self-reflection, self-doubt, and possibly a realistic appraisal of her pre-cult identity. This led me to consider the possibility that Katie’s characteristic identity as an all-too-good person and her desire for certainty might have influenced her attraction to the cult.

After college, Katie wanted to put her idealism to good use. Therefore, she became a teacher in an inner-city school. The day-to-day difficulties with students and the school bureaucracy contrasted sharply with her former fantasies of an idealized life as a devoted teacher. Her perfectionism had never previously been challenged to this degree. This was the first time she had trouble impressing others and achieving her preset goals. Her class was disruptive, and she could not control her rebellious students.

Katie felt lonely in this new city, far from family and friends. After almost a year, Katie’s younger brother, still home in Connecticut, attempted suicide. Katie felt guilty that she hadn’t been there for her brother, who had grown up depending on her. These occurrences left her depressed and confused: Her life had not met her high expectations.

Soon after her brother’s suicide attempt, Katie attended an advertised lecture which promised to give participants tools for a more successful life. She found the speaker, who described himself as a philosopher, to be riveting and inspiring. He presented lofty ideals for a more principled world of love and success. When she approached him to thank him for the lecture, he seemed delighted with her and offered her a job publishing his materials. She was invited to his “enlightened” commune, which offered an alternative lifestyle.

At the commune, she met several other young people who wanted to make their leader’s lofty goals a reality. After feeling isolated, lonely, uncertain, and depressed, Katie was consoled and relieved to be part of this idealistic environment. She initially felt confident that she would be given explicit formulas for a happier and more loving existence. Therefore, Katie left her job.

However, instead of publishing motivational materials, as she had been promised, she was told to work as a nighttime guard in an office building where, according to her leader, “The need was the greatest.” Members were assigned to these jobs so they would have time to read the leader’s “philosophy” and photocopy his grandiose writings in the nighttime hours, while offices were closed. Katie was disappointed but rationalized that this was a small price to pay for becoming “enlightened.”

After hearing her history, I commented that it seemed her cult leader was restricting instead of expanding her world as promised. This comment allowed Katie to consider the cult’s contradictions: actions that contrasted sharply with the group’s stated philosophy of expanded life.

Instead of leading to a higher existence, the leader slowly induced her to feel paranoid about the outside world, particularly about her parents, whom she began to see as rigid, cold, and solely responsible for her brother’s suicide attempt. She came to believe that her parents had high standards that her brother could not meet. I suggested that, perhaps, her leader might be projecting onto her parents his own need to have high standards that were difficult to meet. Also, by helping her to project the blame for the suicide away from herself and onto her parents, the leader aided Katie in defending herself against self-blame for not being present for her brother. Blaming her parents made her feel hostile toward them, promoting emotional distance.

We also explored her tendency to blame herself for things she had no control over. Katie had an unrealistic sense of responsibility for the actions of others. We examined how her cult leader initially helped her defend against her depressed feelings and self-attacking conscience by inducing her to focus solely on her embrace of a self-righteous state. Basking in the reflected glory of the leader’s seeming morality provided her with a feeling of increased self-esteem and purity, and helped her fend off her feelings of insecurity and self-blame.

Although she initially saw her cult leader as a teacher, she soon came to see him as a Christ-like figure. To help her better understand the process that led to the change of her moral code, Katie and I examined how mind control worked in her cult to enhance the leader’s charismatic domination. This explanation helped Katie, as it helps many who feel confused and ashamed when they leave.

Despite her intelligence, Katie’s idealism and her sheltered life did not prepare her to recognize a moralistic narcissist at work. Her leader induced Katie to feel she was being disloyal when she occasionally balked at performing immoral tasks. For example, in addition to the loan scheme, women were pressured to dress in a sexually provocative manner and act seductively, serving as “hooks” to gain money and favors from wealthy businessmen and politicians. After leaving, Katie felt ashamed and blamed herself for her seductive, deceptive behavior.

The cult leader valued Katie’s qualities, and by placing her in a position of authority, he rewarded her if she accepted his belief system. Although Katie was hesitant about enacting the loan scheme, she moved forward, believing that her leader needed to falsify loans to amass money for altruistic projects.

Katie slowly became angry during therapy as she reflected on how she had changed dramatically in her group. She described how the leader’s “poison” came in small doses and was always coupled with a hook—enthusiastic plans for small altruistic projects: a school for indigent children, a soup kitchen, and the like. She believed that she eventually would be able to prove to nonbelievers that her way was good despite her underlying doubts.

Her leader implanted the fear that if she separated from the cult’s ideals, she would become as corrupt as the outer world. Therefore, Katie acquiesced and believed her judgment must be wrong. Although Katie internally struggled with the antisocial deeds she perpetrated on others, she felt she must be loyal to her leader’s noble vision. Therefore, Katie overrode her pre-cult conscience by reframing her immoral acts as a vehicle for achieving the greater good. At the same time, the cult leader influenced her to see the outside world as evil, and this diminished her conflict about harming outsiders.

As a reaction to feelings of disconnection, loneliness, alienation, or depression, receptiveness to communion with a seemingly idealistic group is understandable. However, when the group is indeed a cult, an individual will begin to lose their uniqueness of character, which includes their moral code. This was the dynamic that explains Katie’s change of behavior.

Definition and history of moral narcissists

According to Goldberg, P. (2013), narcissism can be the result of the trauma a child feels when parents fail to help soothe the child’s emotions. In response, the child builds a narcissistic “fortress,” refusing to allow himself to fall in love, and he relates to others only because they serve his own self-interest. In this way, the parents’ lack of empathy has undermined the foundation upon which the child’s true emotional self would, in healthy circumstances, be consolidated.

The child’s defense of the “narcissistic fortress,” can develop into the grandiose self. Similar to the narcissistic fortress, Kernberg (1975) explains that, for these individuals, the grandiose self can be formed as a defense against frustration in early relationships with the child’s parental figures.

According to Kohut, in the early life of moralistic narcissists, difficulties are often caused by the caregivers’ empathic limitations with their children, usually because of the parents’ narcissistic issues. Kohut describes how subtle empathic ruptures can impede conditions required for the healthy growth of the self and the development of empathy (1971). For example, in response to misdeeds or mistakes, the narcissist’s parents angrily might resort to force, threat, or love withdrawal (such as the silent treatment) and these are responses that later might be repeated by the child.

I have found that children who have lacked adequate soothing and comforting experiences generally have more difficulty providing themselves with comforting thoughts and a comforting conscience.

In contrast, empathic parents are loving and nurturing to their children. However, empathic parents also need to intervene when a child misbehaves (e.g., by taking a toy from another child). Young children are not likely to experience inner conflict about the harm they cause others. Along with empathy and caring, parental discipline and fostering a sense of personal responsibility change a child’s behavior. Therefore, empathic parents bring attention to the consequences of the child’s actions, helping the child to take the other child’s perspective.

For example, parents might kindly but firmly tell a 3-year-old, “Johnny feels bad when you don’t share some of your candy with him.” This intervention calls attention to the other child’s distress and increases the child’s sense of empathy (Hoffman, 2000).

Aktar and Thomson indicate that, as a result of these early experiences that hijack the capacity for empathy, the child develops a weak internal system of values (i.e., the absence of firm ethical criteria). These individuals may adapt the ethical judgments of moralistic narcissists. Instead of a normal judgment such as “This is good” or “This is bad,” these individuals make narcissistic judgments in the form of: “This is good for ME” or “This will be bad for ME” (Akhtar & Thomson, 1982). This automatic response appears to have become part of their narcissistic character.

Howell and Itzkowitz theorize that moralistic narcissists plan how they will trick, hook, deceive, and betray others. They get gratification from others’ despair and the emotional torture they inflict, in other words, psychopathic characteristics. However, the difference is that narcissists need to be around people, but typically, psychopaths need no one (Howell & Itzkowitz, 2018).

I have noticed how the narcissistic leader sets up his personal belief system as the general ideal. This belief system can shift over time according to the cult leader’s needs, which change (and even might become contradictory) as his or her desires change. The leader’s beliefs are wrapped in high-minded attitudes that steal from the wider culture. Cult leaders create a doctrine that reinforces their destructive attitudes and immorality and redefines these attitudes as virtues.

According to Stiffell and Holtom (2016), moralistic narcissists draw in prey who are naïve, often idealistic people. As with Katie, these victims might be at a time of life when there is a feeling of uncertainty and vulnerability, so the moralistic narcissist’s appearance of certainty and great confidence is experienced as comforting.

The moralistic narcissist deceptively portrays himself or herself as a person who is living an exceptionally moral life and can satisfy the victim’s dreams. In time, the moralistic narcissist needs to monopolize more and more of the victim’s time and undermine previous relationships. Although the seducer’s reflected glory initially rewards the captured prey, more admiration becomes necessary to combat the moralistic narcissist’s underlying self-loathing, defended by his grandiosity, stemming from his “narcissistic fortress.”

The moralistic narcissist also relies on the power of group processes to gain influence over the recruit.

In 1921, Freud used the example of the army to describe how in groups, members typically regress, and the leader is experienced as a new, idealized father figure with whom recruits can identify. This new influence overrides the followers’ previous personality characteristics and superego, which I refer to as the “conscience” in this paper.

In obedience to the new authority, he may put his former “conscience” out of action and so surrender to the attraction of the increased pleasure that is certainly obtained from the removal of inhibitions. . . .
Therefore, it is not so remarkable that we should see an individual in a group doing or approving things that he would have avoided in normal conditions of life. . . . (p. 85)

Freud, citing Le Bon (1916), explains that there is a group tendency toward a collective mind. Individuals submerge aspects of their original personality and some inhibitions of their conscience as the processes of contagion and suggestibility in a group take hold.

Freud and high ideals

Freud also explains how those who characteristically strived to meet high ideals in their life before joining can become the strongest adherents of the group. Those who were most self-critical often had the strongest need to succeed. This need can become a driving force for achievement (Freud, 1923).

With her determination and drive to please her leader, Katie aptly illustrates this behavior. As I noted in the case, leaders use these strongest adherents to serve as an example for others and serve as their “lieutenants” to implement their plans.

According to Horney (1950), because these narcissists need to believe in their own perfection, achieving glory in any form becomes a primary criterion of a meaningful life. Driven by the insatiable demands of their grandiose selves, they exhibit great ambitions, highly unrealistic expectations, enormous hunger for acclaim, and the urge to succeed at any cost. Furthermore, filled by their experience of perfection and superiority, they unrealistically attribute great importance to themselves (and their decisions) in every situation (Kohut, 1971).

Because of their grandiosity, narcissists adopt an attitude of entitlement and self-importance. These individuals are interpersonally exploitive and take advantage of others only to indulge their own desires (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 669-670). They believe that they are entitled to control others because of their superiority. They will defend themselves in uncomfortable situations by becoming increasingly grandiose and projecting blame onto others when things go wrong. They have a black-and-white vision of the world.

The moralistic narcissist’s attitudes affect the conscience of cult members

The moralistic narcissist may affect their followers’ consciences in varied ways. Some that I have observed include:

• The members feel selfish if they wish to put their own needs before those of the leader. This emotion is reinforced by an ongoing fear of attack for independent actions, leading to hypervigilance that in turn reinforces the need to please.
• They feel like failures because they are unable to attain the impossible standards of the cult.
• They feel like shameful people because of being shamed.
• They feel like bad people because they are being blamed.
• They feel “morally” pressured to report on those who aren’t following the demands of the cult or to treat others harshly and without concern.
  

Moral Change Involves the Suppression of Previous Attitudes

Once they are drawn into the moralistic narcissist’s web, after an initial period of what seems to be total acceptance and love, recruits are pressed to reach the cult leader’s impossibly high goals.

As seen with Katie, they learn to unconsciously suppress values that may contradict the leader’s method, because these values, along with independent action, will be labeled as problematic (evil, satanic, selfish) or disloyal by the cult leader.

The ways people who come under the influence of a moralistic narcissist are influenced to change their values include:

• They submit to the narcissist’s pressure to isolate themselves from authentic pre-cult relationships.
• They are unaware of the narcissist’s deception and exploitation of their trusting nature and inner goodness, concern for others, and honesty.
• They believe that the narcissist’s grandiosity and world vision are enlightening.
• They submit to the narcissist’s pressure for self-disclosure.
• They believe in the narcissist’s focus on the “Greater Good.”
• They become fearful of the harsh consequences of not conforming to the narcissist’s beliefs and fearful of acting independently.
  

First-generation former cult members, who, like Katie, had high ideals before they joined, may become troubled by the harm they cause to others. Even when the leader’s self-serving, sometimes unscrupulous demands torture them, they tend to ultimately embrace the leader’s ideals as they had earlier embraced parental and/or the wider culture’s ideals.

To survive the overwhelming anxiety of living with an abusive moralistic narcissist who can punish at will, the cult member begins to dissociate from unacceptable or uncomfortable feelings. The use of dissociation promotes the formation of two contradictory states, with the “unacceptable” personality becoming suppressed. (At the same time, hypnotic group processes, such as chanting, music, monotonous lectures, etc., may further promote dissociation in the recruit.)

Post-cult, dissociation as well as contradictory values discourage and interfere with connection with others, concentration, a sense of agency, and a feeling of knowing themselves. Cult members often continue in this divided state after they leave the group.

Former Members Struggle Between Two Moralities

Away from the cult leader, many first-generation former cult members may begin to experience a reawakening of their formerly suppressed pre-cult personality and values while continuing to experience cult-created character traits and beliefs. This can lead to a discontinuous sense of themselves. Therefore, they begin to question, “Who am I now?”

In the case of those born and raised in a group, a similar discontinuity may occur but for a slightly different reason. Living away from the threatening cult leader (or parent), the born and raised former cult members might no longer need to dissociate from their inner thoughts now that they no longer need to protect themselves from the cult leader’s wrath.

However, because their outer personalities and beliefs were formed within the group, these former cult members may not be able to initially distinguish between what the group instilled into them and their natural selves, so they continue to struggle with only acknowledging consciously “acceptable” responses.

They learned to look good on the outside while defending against inner pain. They also might have hidden from leaders an inborn capacity for concern for others, particularly their peers (Hoffman, 2000; Winnicott, 1963). These types of behavior protected them in the cult.

The Harsh Conscience and Moral Injury of Former Members

The cult world of punishment sets the stage for a world of punishment and self-defeating behavior after the cult. Most cult members leave a cult with a punishingly harsh conscience, developed by striving for the cult’s impossible ideals and fear of the consequences if they do not. They might believe that they will go to hell or endure some other version of punishment if they do not attain perfection, and they judge others by these same standards. Their leader’s demanding voice continues in their head. Former members often experience attacking attitudes toward themselves and others as they struggle to acclimate to living outside the cult.

After more time in the outside world, most former cult members typically begin to develop a new sense of right and wrong and new values. They begin to view their actions in the cult and what they endured with new eyes. When first-generation former cult members return to their pre-cult values or those born and raised in cults begin to incorporate the wider culture’s values (which might reinforce some formerly suppressed inner attitudes), they are likely to become aware of and experience the results of some degree of moral injury.

The Shay Moral Injury Center’s website defines moral injury as follows:

Moral injury is the suffering people experience when we are in high-stakes situations, things go wrong, and harm results that challenges our deepest moral codes and ability to trust in others or ourselves. The harm may be something we did, something we witnessed, or something that was done to us. It results in moral emotions such as shame, guilt, self-condemnation, outrage, and sorrow.

According to Litz et al. (2009), moral injury can lead to destructive feelings of shame, which can consume the individual’s sense of self. As former cult members reinterpret their experiences with post-cult eyes, these behaviors now appear to have been wrong or hurtful.

Changing ethical beliefs can lead to the feelings associated with moral injury and an accompanying attack on the self for the harm they perpetrated on others in the cult, and attack on others for the harm that was done to them. For example, caring first-generation former cult parents typically feel shame about their treatment of their children. Both first-generation and those raised in cults might feel distressed about the cult-reinforced demand to attack and tattle on peers and even family.

There also may be shame from engaging in behavior, such as the leader’s sexual abuse, that now is seen as a violation. There may be an inability to forgive people who, under the same moralistic narcissist’s influence, harmed the follower.

In other words, as former members begin to recognize the moral injury they have sustained, they may react with a disproportionate harshness, both towards those who harmed them and towards themselves, based on the harshness of the conscience developed within the cult.

Additionally, those who were born and raised in the cult without adequate soothing and comforting experiences have more difficulty providing themselves with comforting thoughts and a comforting developing conscience.

Some former members have developed a post-cult conscience in which they have protected themselves by unconsciously forming an identification with the cult leader; that is, repeating the aggressor’s behavior (Freud, A., 1936), rather than by turning his attitudes against themselves (Ferenczi, 1949).

This second group has defended against the pain inflicted by becoming like the cult leader in certain ways. For example, they might become grandiose, entitled, or unethical, and display a lack of empathy for others. Nevertheless, it also happens that some former cult members are dealing with a conscience that has incorporated some aspects of both identification with the aggressor and identification with the aggressor’s attitude.

It is crucial for all former cult members to understand the influence of the cult’s manipulation and reinterpretation of behavior, and also how the severe consequences of rebelling influenced their cult behavior.

Dealing with Shame

Upon leaving, former members need to deal with the fact that they were manipulated and deceived, sometimes for years. Their leader is a fraud, not a holy being. The leader has transformed their inner experience (beliefs) and personality. This awareness often results in entering post-cult life and therapy with intense feelings of shame:

• Shame derived from being associated with such a “creepy” person or cult group.
• Shame about taking actions in a cult/relationship that violate their previous beliefs or, as they come to realize after leaving, about what is right.
• Shame about the mistreatment of family members, friends, and other cult members.
• Shame from blaming themselves for the mistreatment they received within the cult. Most have been sexually, physically, or verbally abused by the leader or others in the cult.
• Shame about others knowing they are former cult members or were in an abusive relationship—believing “something is wrong with ME.” For those who became involved as adults, shame from feeling that they were “stupid” to become involved in an abusive relationship or cult; therefore, they can no longer trust themselves.
  

Therapeutic Goals

The therapist helps the former cult member to transfer the blame where it belongs—onto the seducer—and to soften the harsh conscience to generate compassion for the self. To do so, the former cult member might do the following:

• Find a trustworthy and respectful therapist with a compassionate and honest conscience: Clients have a right to expect acceptance and exemption from judgment by the therapist, but the therapist needs to have a sense of right and wrong coupled with a compassionate conscience. The therapist focuses on entrenched negative attitudes toward the self and others stemming from the distorted morality of the cult:
  
  1. Focus upon moral code before the cult or relationship.
  2. Focus upon the influence of the moralistic narcissist on one’s conscience while in the cult.
  3. Focus upon the need for moral ambiguity in which there is a humble self-reflection on values instead of self-righteousness, certainty, and black-and-white thinking.
  4. Serve as an example of a flawed human being who can accept her limitations and even enjoy some degree of rebelliousness against strict “self-righteous” ideals. However, at the same time, treat others with concern, respect, honesty, and kindness.
     
• Find a trustworthy friend, mentor, or organization to listen to the former member’s story and help objectify the narrative and thereby lessen self-blame. At the same time, the former cult member can be helped to discover new identifications with compassionate people to begin to gain independence from their cult-related moralistic conscience and become a more benign and nurturing person.
• Receive psychoeducation: Become informed about coercive control techniques, moralistic narcissists’ characteristics and methods, and learn about trauma’s impact. This helps the former cult member understand how behavior was influenced to change in the group.
• Use therapy to uncover the source of false beliefs and implanted fears.
• Recognize unconscious repetition of the past in the present within the therapist/client relationship and other post-cult relationships. This protects against future harm.
• Focus on developing critical thinking skills (e.g., making decisions), acts of agency, and the expression of a wide range of emotions, to counteract feelings of powerlessness and helplessness.
  

Once former cult members gain an understanding of their internal world, particularly the difference between their cult-developed morality and their authentic conscience, they can begin to let go of self-undermining behavior, and when indicated, their harshness towards others.

As a result, their depression and their anxiety can begin to lift. At the same time, making the unconscious conscious and promoting insightfulness also enhances their ability to set healthy boundaries and promote self-agency as they begin to have confidence in themselves.