ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on understanding how fear and shame create a psychological prison that inhibits healing from the relational trauma of subjugation, viewed specifically in the context of cults and cultic relationships. Fear and shame are what bedevil all traumatized people, as they struggle to feel safe in a world where they have felt trapped, helpless, and powerless due to traumatic experience. This chapter explores how shame plays a part in successful cult recruitment, the role of shame in the cult leader's psychology, the use of shame in cults as a means of control and domination, and the ways that shame haunts those who leave cults.
