ABSTRACT
As leaders, malignant narcissists ascend to the power positions in any of civil society’s broad categories. Political, commercial, and spiritual/human potential social groupings are vulnerable to the agenda of the destructive leader’s charisma and megalomania. Once in control, the malignant narcissist will morph the group into a type, which from the perspective of organizational development, could be referred to as a cult, high-pressure group, or totalitarian regime. To supplement the author’s categorization of such totalistic groups is mention of Lalich and Tobias’ cult categorizations and also an interpretation of Lalich’s theory of bounded choice, which explains how a malignantly narcissistic leader forms followers around himself and his totalistic organization. The charismatic authority of destructive leaders in organizational context is specifically explored through the tenures of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the Rajneesh International Foundation, Tony Alamo and the Alamo Ministry Foundation, Keith Raniere and NXIVM, Marshall Applewhite and Heaven’s Gate cult, Roger Ailes and the Fox News cult, and Shoko Asahara and the Aum Shinrikyo cult. The chapter will be especially useful to psychodynamically-minded psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists interested in understanding cult types and categories and the nature of charismatic authority and malignant narcissism in the formation and sustaining of high-pressure groups.
