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

Charles B. Strozier (Professor of history and criminal justice, Professor of history and criminal justice, City University of New York, John Jay College),David M. Terman (Director, Director, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis),James W. Jones (Professor of Religion, adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology, Professor of Religion, adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology, Rutgers University),Katherine A. Boyd (Doctoral student, Doctoral student, John Jay College of Criminal Justice)

The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence, and History
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Oxford University Press Inc
Country
United States
Published
19 April 2010
Pages
296
ISBN
9780195379662

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

Charles B. Strozier (Professor of history and criminal justice, Professor of history and criminal justice, City University of New York, John Jay College),David M. Terman (Director, Director, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis),James W. Jones (Professor of Religion, adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology, Professor of Religion, adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology, Rutgers University),Katherine A. Boyd (Doctoral student, Doctoral student, John Jay College of Criminal Justice)

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.

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