The antisocial and violent behaviors of cult-like religious groups (CRGs) and the maladaptive social consequences of their activities suggest clinical or character pathology and invite diagnostic and dynamic formulations of their members' personalities. The current study utilized secondary reports in the commercial media about CRG members, combined with the lived experience method of two of the authors. The resulting core characteristics of CRG members were then classified following the alternative DSM-5 alternative model for personality disorders. The overall clinical picture is then discussed in terms of the shared psychodynamic sources that undergird the behaviors of the antisocial-obsessive-compulsive personality disorders. By tracing the personality characteristics into their unconscious sadomasochistic conflicts, these insights shed light on the paradoxical frequent co-occurrence of antisocial and obsessive-compulsive characteristics among extremists, in contrast to the patient population at large.
