We often think of cult leaders as grand, mythic figures—charismatic gurus operating on distant compounds, leading thousands of devoted followers into psychological bondage. But cult dynamics do not begin on massive stages. They exist in ordinary workplaces, family units, and social circles. The small-scale cult leader lives right next door or sits in the cubicle beside you, decorating their workspace with superficial affirmations while orchestrating calculated smear campaigns against anyone who refuses to submit to their illusion.
I once worked alongside a young 26-year-old woman who embodied this exact dynamic. She plastered her desk with inspirational notes and superficial quotes about positivity, kindness, and "being the type of person you want to meet." Yet behind this performative sweetness was a calculating manipulator. She quickly realized that I could not be fooled or coerced into her orbit. Because I refused to bow to her covert authority, I became an immediate threat—and she put a target on my back for over a year.
She recruited coworkers as her "flying monkeys," showering them with gifts, throwing them birthday parties, and wrapping them in a smothering display of artificially inflated warmth. When she launched attack after attack against me—writing false incident reports accusing me of the very duplicities she was committing—the surrounding group refused to see the truth. To them, she was "so nice," and anyone pointing out her toxicity was branded as the "problem."
Yet, reality cannot be inverted forever. Every move she made to destroy me ultimately backfired, culminating in her firing after she was caught stealing her own coworkers' Christmas bonuses. The performative mask fell, exposing the predatory core underneath.
She is a single mother who had a child at 17. One must ask the cold question: what kind of teenager thinks it is okay to bring a baby into this world, unless she subconsciously wants a human prop to exploit, hide behind, and use to manipulate others to fulfill her own unconscious needs? Her child's father is currently in prison. I have no doubt her psychological mind games helped put him there; he reacted blindly to her emotional abuse instead of walking away. Had he consciously felt his justified anger within the context of his own childhood—realizing she was merely a stand-in symbolizing a toxic caregiver from his past—he could have freed himself from ever falling into a malignant person's trap again.
Scapegoating: Voting for Your Own Destruction
The tragedy of the emotionally repressed is that they are entirely driven by forces they refuse to see. This young woman, surviving on food stamps and rental assistance, proudly voted for Donald Trump. When she told me she was voting for Trump. I responded: Really? But thought to myself: of course you are. Now, as his administration aggressively moves to gut the very social safety nets she depends on to survive, she is left blind to the reality of her choices.
Why do people consistently vote against their own self-interest? Because they are driven by a desperate, unresolved need to alleviate their childhood repression superficially. As I wrote many years ago in my post on Scapegoating, hatred can never be resolved by projecting it onto an external group. Trump won because he offered his followers the perfect, pre-packaged scapegoats—such as undocumented immigrants—to dump their repressed rage onto. They project their internal misery outward, blinded by the unresolved, repressed hatred, completely unaware that the politicians they cheer for are dismantling the roofs over their heads.
The Psychological Machinery of the Everyday Cult Leader
Why do people behave this way, and why are so many people so eager to follow them?
In my book, A Dance to Freedom: Your Guide to Liberation from Lies and Illusions, I explored the deeper psychological mechanisms that drive individuals to cast themselves in the role of authoritative figures and why so many adults fall prey to them:
“…The fact that the attendant uncritical and irrational expectations of healing and ‘salvation’ can lead to the establishment of totalitarian sects is borne out by the crass example of mass abuse at the hands of the exponents of ‘feeling therapy’ as described in detail by Carol Lynn Mither
s in her book Therapy Gone Mad: The True Story of Hundreds of Patients and a Generation Betray ed (1994). But this study was possible only after the community she describes had disbanded, something that frequently takes decades. Today we know that such groups exist and that members of sects are done irreparable harm before they become aware of the fact.”
“The thing that concerns me most about cult groups is the unconscious manipulations that I have described in detail in my work. It is the way in which the repressed and unreflected childhood biographies of parents and therapists influence the lives of children and patients entrusted to their care, without anyone involved actually realizi
ng it... First, they had learned how to reduce people to the emotional state of the helpless child. Once they had achieved that, they also learned how to use unconscious regression to exercise total control over their victims. From then on, what they did seemed to come automatically, in accordance with the child-rearing patterns instilled into them in their own childhoo d.”
Society is filled with adults who remain emotionally stuck in early childhood, playing the role of the "good, obedient child." Because they have never confronted their own repressed childhood trauma or allowed themselves to see the truth about their early environment, they remain vulnerable to anyone who projects parent-like authority over them. They mistake performative niceness for love, and superficial affirmations for genuine morality.
This dependency is why traditional self-help systems, superficial therapies, and authoritarian institutions so often fail to bring true liberation. As I noted in A Dance to Freedom:
“Most people who search for answers never actually find them, because people suffering with their own repression are the ones who practice traditional therapies. Since the beginning of human history, priests, teachers, gurus, psychics, doctors, philosophers, and psychologists ha
ve all duped people into thinking they could provide real assistance when it was never possible because the healers were also victims of the ir own childho ods... ‘I don’t see the path to growing but rather the repetition and continuation of the child’s dependency on illusions,’ Alice Miller writes of traditional healing methods. ‘Growing and healing begin when former victims of mistreatme nt start to confront illusions about the “love” of a higher power and without blaming themselves for projections. They allow themselves to feel their authentic emotions without moral restrictions and in this way become eventually true to themsel ves.’”
When an abusive or manipulative personality sets their sights on you, the pressure to conform, appease, or defend yourself within their corrupt framework can feel overwhelming. But true liberation requires stepping completely out of their illusion.
A fraud can play the role of the righteous authority only so long as those around them agree to remain helpless children. The moment you stand firmly in your own truth, unswayed by smear campaigns or performative charm, you become unmanipulatable. The illusion eventually collapses under the weight of its own deception.
For further reading on this topic, explore Alice Miller's seminal article published on my blog:
This blog post was triggered by my comment below on an X post.
Human vulnerability to articulate authority
The Absence of Emotional Truth:
AI can mirror back intelligence, but it lacks genuine self-awareness and emotional truth. When people treat an echo chamber as a guide, they lose the capacity for authentic self-reliance.
The New High-Tech Guru:
Cult dynamics have simply gone digital. AI doesn't need to 'think' to control—it just needs people to surrender their critical judgment to a machine that never doubts itself.
Irony of the System:
The real danger isn't just that AI will outsmart us; it’s that humans are eager to give up their agency to avoid the discomfort of making their own choices.
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