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[Murcielago]

Profile of a Cult Leader

Trait 1: Glibness/superficial charm
Glibness is a hallmark of [cult leaders]. They are able to use language effortlessly to beguile, confuse, and convince. They are captivating storytellers. They exude self-confidence and are able to spin a web that intrigues others and pulls them into the [cult leader’s] life.


Most of all, they are persuasive. Frequently, they have the capacity to destroy their critics verbally or disarm them emotionally.


Trait 2: Manipulative and conning
Cult leaders do not recognize the individuality or rights of others, which makes all self-serving behaviors permissible. The hallmark of the [cult leader] is the psychopathic maneuver, which is essentially interpersonal manipulation “based on charm. The manipulator appears to be helpful, charming even ingratiating or seductive, but is covertly hostile, domineering…”

Trait 3: Grandiose sense of self
The cult leader enjoys tremendous feelings of entitlement. He believes everything is owed to him as a right. Preoccupied with his own fantasies, he must always be the center of attention. He presents himself as the ‘Ultimate One’: enlightened, a vehicle of god, a genius, the leader of humankind, and sometimes even the most humble of humble. He has an insatiable need of adulation and attendance. His grandiosity may also be a defense against inner emptiness, depression, and a sense of insignificance.

Paranoia often accompanies the grandiosity, reinforcing the isolation of the group and the need for protection against a perceived hostile environment. In this way, he creates an us-versus-them mentality.

Trait 4: Pathological lying
[Cult leaders] lie coolly and easily, even when it is obvious they are being untruthful. It is almost impossible for them to be consistently truthful about either a major or minor issue. They lie for no apparent reason, even when it would seem easier and safer to tell the truth…

Another form of lying common among cult leaders is pseudological fantasica, an extension of pathological lying. Leaders tend to create a complex belief system, often about their own powers and abilities, in which they themselves sometimes get caught up. “It is often difficult to determine whether the lies are an actual delusional distortion of reality or are expressed with the conscious or unconscious intent to deceive.”


These manipulators are rarely original thinkers. Plagiarists and thieves, they seldom credit the true originators of ideas, often co-opting authorship…

Trait 5: Lack of remorse, shame or guilt
…[cult leaders] see those around them as objects, targets, or opportunities, not as people. They do not have friends, they have victims and accomplices – and the latter frequently end as victims. For [cult leaders], the ends always justify the means. Thus there is no place for feelings of remorse, shame, or guilt. Cult leaders feel justified in all their actions since they consider themselves the ultimate moral arbiter. Nothing gets in their way.

Trait 6: Shallow emotions
…Hiding behind the “mask of sanity”, the cult leader exposes feelings insofar as they serve an ulterior motive. He can witness or order acts of utter brutality without experiencing a shred of emotion. He casts himself in a role of total control, which he plays to the hilt. What is most promised in cults – peace, joy, enlightenment, love, and security – are goals that are forever out of reach of the leader, and thus also the followers. Since the leader is not genuine, neither are his promises.

Trait 7: Incapacity for love
As the “living embodiment of God’s love,” the leader is tragically flawed in being able to either give or receive love…

…The leader’s tremendous need to be loved is accompanied by an equally strong disbelief in the love offered him by his followers…

…hence the often unspeakably cruel and harsh testing of his devotees. Unconditional surrender is an absolute requirement…

Trait 8: Need for stimulation
Thrill-seeking behaviors, often skirting the letter or spirit of the law, are common among [cult leaders]…

Cult leaders live on the edge, constantly testing the beliefs of their followers, often with increasingly bizarre behaviors, punishments, and rules. Other mechanisms of stimulation come in the form of unexpected, seemingly spontaneous outbursts, which usually take the form of verbal abuse and sometimes physical punishment. The [cult leader] has a cool indifference to things around him, yet his icy coldness can quickly turn into rage, vented on those around him.

Trait 9: Callousness/lack of empathy
[Cult leaders] readily take advantage of others, expressing utter contempt for anyone else’s feelings. Someone in distress is not important to them. Although intelligent, perceptive, and quite good at sizing people up, they make no real connections with others. They use their “people skills” to exploit, abuse, and wield power.

[Cult leaders] are unable to empathize with the pain of their victims…

Trait 10: Poor behavioral controls/impulsive nature
Like small children, many [cult leaders] have difficulty regulating their emotions. Adults who have temper tantrums are frightening to be around. Rage and abuse, alternating with token expressions of love and approval, produce an addictive cycle for both abuser and abused, as well as create a sense of hopelessness in the latter…

Who could possibly control someone who believes himself to be all-powerful, all-knowing, and entitled to every wish, someone who has no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for the impact on those around him? Generally this aberrant behavior is a well-kept secret, known only to a few disciples. The others see only perfection…

Trait 11: Early behavior problems/juvenile delinquency
[Cult leaders] frequently have a history of behavioral and academic difficulties. They often “get by” academically, conning other students and teachers. Encounters with juvenile authorities are frequent.

Equally prevalent are difficulties in peer relationships and developing and keeping friends, marked control problems, and other aberrant behaviors such as stealing, fire setting, and cruelty to others.

Trait 12: Irresponsibility/unreliability
Not concerned about the consequences of their behavior, [cult leaders] leave behind them the wreckage of others’ lives and dreams. They may be totally oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they inflict on others, something which they regard as neither their problem nor their responsibility.

[Cult leaders] rarely accept blame for their failures or mistakes. Scapegoating is common, blaming followers, those outside the group, a member’s family, the government, Satan – anyone and everyone but the leader…

Trait 13: Promiscuous sexual behavior/infidelity
Promiscuity, polygamy, rape, and sexual acting out of all sorts, are frequently practiced by cult leaders. Conversely, there is often stringent sexual control of the followers through such tactics as enforced celibacy, arranged marriages, forced breakups and divorces, removal of children from their parents, forced abortions or mandated births. For [cult leaders], sex is primarily a control and power issue…

Trait 14: Lack of realistic life plan/parasitic lifestyle
The [cult leader] tends to move around a lot, making countless efforts at “starting over” while seeking out fertile new ground to exploit…

The flip side of this erratic life planning is the all-encompassing promise for the future that the cult leader makes to his followers. Many groups claim as their goal world domination or salvation at the Apocalypse. The leader is the first to proclaim the utopian nature of the group, which is usually simply another justification for irrational behavior and stringent controls.


The leader’s sense of entitlement is often demonstrated by the contrast between his luxurious lifestyle and the impoverishment of his followers. Most cult leaders are supported by gifts and donations from their followers, who may be pressured to turn over much of their income and worldly possessions to the group…

Trait 15: Criminal or entrepreneurial versatility
Cult leaders change their image and that of the group as needed to avoid prosecution and litigation, to increase income, and to recruit a range of members. Cult leaders have an innate ability to attract followers who have the skills and connections that the leaders lack. The longevity of the group is dependent on the willingness of the leadership to adapt as needed and preserve the group…

Source: Captive Hearts, Captive Minds © 1994 by Madeleine Landau Tobias and Janja Lalich. Exerpts reproduced with permission from Hunter House Inc., Publishers. To order the book, please call (800) 266-5592, fax (510) 865-4295, visit the website at www.hunterhouse.com, or write to Hunter House Publishers, PO Box 2914, Alameda CA 94501.

[Murcielago]

Cult Checklist
The following statements, compiled by Dr. Michael Langone, editor of Cultic Studies Journal, often characterize manipulative groups.

The group is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous, unquestioning commitment.

The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.

The group is preoccupied with making money.

Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.

Mind-numbing techniques (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, debilitating work routines) are used to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).

The leadership dictates sometimes in great detail how members should think, act, and feel (for example: members must get permission from leaders to date, change jobs, get married; leaders may prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, how to discipline children, and so forth).
The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s), and members (for example: the leader is considered the Messiah or an avatar; the group and/or the leader has a special mission to save humanity).

The group has a polarized us- versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.

The group's leader is not accountable to any authorities (as are, for example, military commanders and ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream denominations).

The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group (for example: collecting money for bogus charities).

The leadership induces guilt feelings in members in order to control them.

Members' subservience to the group causes them to cut ties with family and friends, and to give up personal goals and activities that were of interest before joining the group.

Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group.

Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members

[Murcielago]

Characteristics of a Destructive Cult:

1. Authoritarian pyramid structure with authority at the top
2. Charismatic or messianic leader(s) (Messianic meaning they either say they are God OR that they alone can interpret the scriptures the way God intended.....the leaders are self-appointed.)
3. Deception in recruitment and/or fund raising
4. Isolation from society -- not necessarily physical isolation like on some compound in Waco, but this can be psychological isolation -- the rest of the world is not saved, not Christian, not transformed (whatever) -- the only valid source of feedback and information is the group
5. Use of mind control techniques (we use Dr. Robert Jay Lifton's criteria from chapter 22 of his book "Thought Reform & the Psychology of Totalism" to compare whether the eight psychological and social methods he lists are present in the group at question)

Mileu Control: Control of the environment and communication within the environment

Mystical Manipulation: Seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment, while it actually has been orchestrated totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative the "principles" (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only true path to salvation (or enlightenment)

Demand for Purity: The world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil (everything outside the group) one must continually change or conform to the group "norm"; tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for the group's controlling and manipulative influences

Confession: Cultic confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself sessions in which one confesses to one's sin are accompanied by patterns of criticism and self-criticism, generally transpiring within small groups with an active and dynamic thrust toward personal change

Sacred Science: The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited a reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine offers considerable security to young people because it greatly simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology

Loading the Language: Words are given new meanings -- the outside world does not use the words or phrases in the same way -- it becomes a "group" word or phrase

Doctrine Over Person: If one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question -- it is always "turned around" on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly the underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or human experience and one must subject one's experience to that "truth" the experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt one is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one's own evil when doubt arises, conflicts become intense

Dispensing of Existence: Since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not saved, and do not have the right to exist; impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed one outside the group may always receive their right of existence by joining the group; fear manipulation -- if one leaves this group, one leaves God or loses their salvation/transformation, or something bad will happen to them; the group is the "elite", outsiders are "of the world", "evil", "unenlightened", etc
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