Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism traces the historical and psychosocial development of religiosity and applies anthropological and psychoanalytic perspectives to the understanding of religions, particularly their fanatical and fundamentalist expressions. Religious ideology, practices and institutions satisfy many human needs, including those arising from our hysterical, obsessional, and narcissistic dispositions: the need to segregate the good and bad aspects of our personalities; to belong to an idealized group; and to feel secure and special by identifying with, or living in the orbit of, a supposedly omnipotent figure. But these needs and their modes of satisfaction are distorted by religions which may then nurture and accommodate malign characteristics, especially in the case of the monotheisms, narcissistic inflation or grandiosity. The book shows how interactions between religious ideology and personal development become intricated in the narcissistic pathology which underlies much of the violence and religious aggression in the world today. It presents both a new account of the historical and psychosocial development of religiosity and a powerful polemic against the religions which delusorily satisfy some of the very needs they create. The book will appeal to psychoanalysts, anthropologists, philosophers, sociologists, and all those interested in the place of religion in the modern world.