Emerging From a Cult – Rorschach Indications of Traumatic Damage to the Self

Abstract: This case concerns a 22-year-old White nonbinary British person who sought a consultation following an abusive childhood. The family belonged to a religious cult that required strict conformity to traditional gender stereotypes. The patient’s attempts at rebellion were met by the family’s determination to cast their child as mentally ill, thereby invalidating their identity. Diagnosis was used as a weapon of control and humiliation to discredit the patient’s own independent thinking. The patient had left the cult in which they were brought up. They wanted recommendations for how to adapt to adult life outside of the cult. The Group Psychological Abuse Scale, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI–2), the Trauma Symptom Inventory-2 (TSI–2) and the Rorschach were administered. Judith Herman proposed the concept of complex posttraumatic stress disorder in 1992, which is applicable to this case. Some of the research literature with ex-cult members who grew up in a cult is reviewed to place the test data in context. Results from the three self-report measures are presented. The Rorschach results are then discussed in detail. The combination of morbid, reflection, and vista responses demonstrates the impact of the abusive system on the patient’s sense of self and it provides some pointers for therapeutic intervention.