Psicoanalisi, fondamentalismo e terrorismo religioso: considerazioni in psicologia della religione.

Fundamentalism is mainly of religious kind. In this essay, the religious feeling is considered an analytical subject-matter as a compromise between conscious and unconscious desires. It is treated as a transitional mental content curbing freedom of personal thought and agency. Through a brief historical survey, it is shown how fundamentalism does not equate with Islam, rather it is a 'overall psychological reaction' related to both authoritarian and dependent personality traits. The upholded thesis is that fundamentalism generates when a belief is radicalized and substitutes for a narcissistically wounded identity. This latter is especially unstable in people migrated in different religious and cultural environment due to the cultural, symbolic and identity eradication. The second and third generation seems to be those more affected. An individual Ego Ideal is superimposed to society; it becomes the justificatory for terroristic actions in which the freezing and Self-damaging experience is made resonate into others. Fundamentalism is a fusion desire with the supreme which the aim of healing the wounded identity; it is expressed through deathnarcissism which, in turns, leads to the complete stillness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]