The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence, and History

This penetrating book sheds light on the psychology of fundamentalism, with a particular focus on those who become extremists and fanatics. What accounts for the violence that emerges among some fundamentalist groups? The contributors to this book identify several factors: a radical dualism, in which all aspects of life are bluntly categorized as either good or evil; a destructive inclination to interpret authoritative texts, laws, and teachings in the most literal of terms; an extreme and totalized conversion experience; paranoid thinking; and an apocalyptic world view. After examining each of these concepts in detail, and showing the ways in which they lead to violence among widely disparate groups, these engrossing essays explore such areas as fundamentalism in the American experience and among jihadists, and they illuminate aspects of the same psychology that contributed to such historical crises as the French Revolution, the Nazi movement, and post-Partition Hindu religious practice.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements i Preface iii Martin E. Marty Introduction 1 Charles B. Strozier and David M. Terman Part I: What is the Fundamentalist Mindset? 9 1 Definitions and Dualisms 10 Charles B. Strozier and Katharine Boyd 2 Theories of Group Psychology, Paranoia, and Rage 18 David M. Terman 3 The Apocalyptic 41 Charles B. Strozier and Katharine Boyd 4 The Charismatic Leader and the Totalism of Conversion 60 Charles B. Strozier, Katharine Boyd, and James W. Jones Part II: Motivations for Violence 71 5 The Paranoid Gestalt 72 David M. Terman 6 The Apocalyptic Other 97 Charles B. Strozier 7 Triggering the Fundamentalist Mind: Having Control Under Control 111 Bettina Muenster and David Lotto 8 Fundamentalist Faith States: Affect Regulation and the Attachment Relationship to God 126 Daniel Hill Part III: Christian and American Contexts 139 9 Eternal Warfare: Violence on the Mind of American Apocalyptic Christianity 140 James W. Jones 10 Opening the Seven Seals of Fundamentalism 164 Charles B. Strozier 11 The Unsettling of the Fundamentalist Mindset: Shifts in Apocalyptic Belief in Contemporary Conservative Christianity 188 Lee Quinby Part IV: Global and Historical Contexts 212 12 Motivations for Jihadi Violence 213 Farhad Khosrokhavar 13 Ordering Chaos: the Nazi Millennialism and the Quest for Meaning 238 David Redles 14 The French Revolution and the Paranoid Gestalt 273 David P. Jordan 15 Hindu Victimhood and India's Muslim Minority 304 John R. McLane Conclusion: A Fundamentalist Mindset? 336 James W. Jones

About the Author :
Charles B. Strozier is Professor of History and Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, John Jay College, and a practicing psychoanalyst. David M. Terman is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and Director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. James W. Jones is Professor of Religion and adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University. Katharine A. Boyd is a doctoral student at John Jay College, City University of New York.

Review :
"This collection is remarkable in both its scope and quality. It includes the most knowledgeable voices, always rigorous and probing, on the overall subject of apocalypticism. There is no other treatment of the subject that integrates its psychological, historical, theological, and cultural dimensions. The volume will surely be indispensable to everyone concerned with this extremely important phenomenon." --Robert Jay Lifton, author of Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide "Is there a fundamentalist mind-set that leads to violence? The authors of this excellent volume answer yes. Their arguments are so full of insights that they will make this book the indispensable reference for future debates on this subject." --Marc Sageman, M.D., Ph.D., author of Leaderless Jihad "This book succeeds admirably in laying out a distinctive set of criteria for understanding religious fundamentalism. Its great virtue is the care with which it deploys the methods and concepts of individual psychology in order to distinguish fundamentalist violence from religious faith." --Constantin Fasolt, Karl J. Weintraub Professor of History and the College, The University of Chicago "The editors and contributors are to be congratulated for undertaking this interdisciplinary study... there is much here that can contribute to enhanced understanding of new religions and violence." --Nova Religio "This work will have wide appeal to those engaged in work on religion in work on religion and violence....The weakness of the book is the emphasis placed on the potential dangers of the fundamentalist mindset, with but a fleeting mention of its benefits."--Joseph M. Kemp, Drew University "[T]his is a very interesting and timely book deserving of wide attention...These are intelligent people, dealing intelligently with a very serious bu slippery subject. What these people have to tell us about the first eight years of their discussion is more than worthy."--Religion