Cults: how do their messianic leaders learn the cult psychology rule book?

Whether we look at a meditation cult, a new messiah cult, a hybrid Eastern religious one, a psychology cult, a political cult, space opera cults like Scientology and Heaven’s Gate, environmental warrior cults, or what have you there are amazing similarities in the psychology used to recruit and retain members.

Whatever the cult’s focus, when we break down the psychology of the cult leader, they are amazingly alike. They are people who as children had a massive inferiority complex and a feeling of being alienated from the mainstream culture around them. They are deeply paranoid. Instead of reacting to these pressures with withdrawal, as most such individuals do, they react with an aggressive drive for power and control. They develop a grandiose sense of their own importance and omniscience. They view other people as objects to be used to further their own desires. And they know how to use thought reform and thought control to gather and hold followers around them who will willingly sacrifice their own needs for the good of the leader. No matter what the cult’s stated goals are, when we break down what the cult leader actually does and asks followers to do, it is always all about the leader.

But how do they learn the clever psychological tricks needed to exercise thought reform, AKA brainwashing, on their followers? How do they figure out how to train cult members in the inner circle to be effective recruiters? Presumably, there is no Cookie-Cutter Messiah School for these goons to attend. And yet their thought-reform methods are indeed cookie cutter. Do they spend years researching cult formation, or are they inspired by some demonic force? What makes these guys and gals all tick to the same time-pulse?