What makes a cult a cult? Does this sound familiar?

[Rocky]

Male cult leaders sometimes claim droit du seigneur over female followers or use physical violence to sexually exploit them. But, on the whole, they find it more efficient to dress up the exploitation as some sort of gift or therapy: an opportunity to serve God, an exorcism of “hangups,” a fast track to spiritual enlightenment. One stratagem favored by Keith Raniere, the leader of the New York-based self-help cult NXIVM, was to tell the female disciples in his inner circle that they had been high-ranking Nazis in their former lives, and that having yogic sex with him was a way to shift the residual bad energy lurking in their systems.

According to Sarah Berman, whose book “Don’t Call It a Cult” (Steerforth) focusses on the experiences of NXIVM’s women members, Raniere was especially alert to the manipulative uses of shame and guilt.

[Bolshevik]

High demand, or high pressure groups, . .  I've been hearing that term in places.   . . . It at least implies someone or something is acting as a force.

 

"Cult following" can be a fun term. . And there isn't usually someone directing its movement 

[Bolshevik]

Enmeshment.  . . . When one person and another have no boundaries . . . Where one person ends and the other begins is not defined. 

The shared fantasy . . . When you are not you but are an extension of the leader 

 

[Bolshevik]

 

https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=29416

Of course, one logical outcome of this disorder – indeed, one which is necessary for narcissists to wreak the havoc that they do – is that they can’t do the damage to society and their social networks all by themselves. None of the narcissistic despots listed above could have done what they did in their lives without the help and support of others.