Author Description

Fundamentalism is a social phenomenon and psychoanalysis can deal with it by adopting some theoretical contributions enabling itself to face such challenges the social domain issues to it.<br/>Among the authors who covered, in a very original way, the ‘border’ between psychoanalysis and ‘bordering’ disciplines with particular regard to fundamentalism, Janine Puget has an important place. This book is dedicated to her memory since its second edition was published soon after the Argentinean psychoanalyst passed away. In this third edition of the book, in order to promote further investigations on these topics, Henry Abramovitch, a prominent figure of psychoanalytic studies on political violence and radical nationalism, was invited to contribute to it.<br/>Religious fundamentalism is a central topic of the chapters: while Vamik D. Volkan focuses on the differences and similarities between the restricted extreme religious groups and the globalized ones, Werner Bohleber and Sverre Varvin show how the fundamentalist mindset can be interpreted psychoanalytically since it is something that usually develops within the context of a fundamentalist movement, political, religious or otherwise, where the ideological aspect may be underdeveloped and the psychological side have become more dominant. According to Bohleber a comparison of the ideational worlds of radical German nationalism after 1918 with Islamist fundamentalism reveals some amazing similarities. For the German psychoanalyst the following unconscious ideational complexes have proved significant in the analysis of radical nationalism and serve as a heuristic basis from which to examine the deep structures of religious-political visions in Islamist fundamentalism: 1) caretaking fantasies and sibling rivalry; 2) purity and the ideational conception of the other; 3) visions of group unity and fantasies of fusion. For Sverre Varvin if religious fundamentalism raises the question of fundamentals, that is how not to lose ho