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In 1982, Jim Jones, a womaninzing minister of an off-beat church in California, took about 900 followers to Guyana, South America, where he led them in the largest mass suicide ritual in recorded history. According to newspaper accounts, he was a charismatic man who had talked them into killing themselves and their children over a period of months, convincing them that the end of the world was near. On the appointed day, the entire flock of men, women, and children took cyanide pills together and were found sprawled on the ground the following morning.
In 1956, Margaret Mahler (1968) treated a 3-year-old girl named Violet, an autistic child, whose parents emotionally deprived her from infancy on. Her mother locked her in a room all day, letting her cry, scream, and beat against the door, while she and her husband practiced their musical instruments in another room. Several times a day she would feed the child without smiling at her, and on other occasions, such as when she found that Violet was smearing her feces on her crib, she beat her. Violet retreated to a world of psychosis.
Salem, Massachusetts will be forever famous for its witch-hunt in 1692, where, “on the basis of statements extracted from children who had been stimulated to hysteria by stories told by an old West Indian servant, more than 200 persons were imprisoned, 55 were tortured, 19 were hanged, and one was pressed to death” (Morse and Hendelson, 1972).
Charles Manson, an ex-convict, formed a cult of followers, mostly young women, during the 1960s, who joined him in nightly incantations, rituals, and orgies. Charles was said to be the master of the