It takes the worst of human traits and codifies them into law.
This goes hand in hand with Nicolai Sennels own independent studies on the phenomenon of Muslim criminality, regardless of what country the Muslim criminal hails from, the mindset is the same. So yes in many way, Islam is in fact monolithic.
Instead of developing normal maternal feelings for her baby, she experiences the needs of her baby unconsciously as attacking and persecutory. I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t so much patricide as it was matricide. In 2010 my theory was confirmed by a documentary maker who had read my work and had also spoken with neuroscientists who felt that it was very difficult for a mother to bond with her baby in shame honor cultures that advocates wife beating, female genital mutilation and honor killing.
This is NOT to blame the female, but it is hard to access the empathy necessary to develop a healthy loving bond with her infant free of unconscious recycled hatred. One has to look to the nonverbal language of the terrorists and read their violent behavior in conjunction with their dysfunctional family dynamics. Unlike many followers of Freud who stressed the mother, Freud stressed the importance of the father and how he plays a role in helping the son to overcome Oedipal rivals not through aggression. In Islam the father does play a role, basically absent or ineffective mainly because he never had a role model of a father who effectively set limits in a non-violent manner. The learned model of behavior is to act out violence rather than to put feelings into words and resolve conflict.
A Candid Discussion with Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin on Suicide Terrorism
Throughout the Middle East, many Muslims and non-Muslims have fallen victim to suicide bombings. In fact, more Muslims have been killed in suicide bombings in the region than Jews and Christians. This extreme form of violence has been the subject of many studies. Researchers have been baffled as to why someone, mostly at a young age, decides to take the lives of others and end his/her own life in the process. Questions have revolved around such topics as religious teachings, ideology, nationalism, and hatred of the “other.” In a unique and novel approach to the issue of suicide terrorism, Dr. Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin takes an entirely different look at this topic and informs her audience of aspects of suicide terrorism that can offer new directions for policy makers and for the field of counter-terrorism around the world. Dr. Hartevelt Kobrin is an Israeli psychoanalyst and counter terrorism expert and a fellow at the American Center for Democracy. She is the author, most recently of, Penetrating The Terrorist Psyche, in which she delves into the dark world of Islamic suicide terrorism using psychoanalytical methods that include early childhood development stages. The following discussion with Dr. Hartevelt Kobrin was conducted by Arian Moradzadeh. Mr. Moradzadeh is an independent researcher in psychoanalysis and translator of essential works in the field of psychoanalysis from German language.
__________________________________________________________________
How would you assess the state of psychoanalysis today within psychological disciplines?
It is a very good question how the confluence of psychoanalysis continues to evolve and engage with other disciplines, yet within the field of psychology, psychoanalysis has generally been marginalized. Paradoxically, psychology as an academic discipline could never have developed without its psychoanalytic roots. Since I am deeply involved in counterterrorism, I have found that psychoanalysis provides us with invaluable tools for they are the only tools that can decode the unconscious rage and promote a better understanding of terrorism. Nevertheless, there has been great resistance to integrating the studies of psychoanalysis, which allows us to delve into the psyche of the terrorist for the field of counter-terrorism.
I understand how frightening this special knowledge is that counter-terrorist experts themselves are ironically quite terrified, which accounts for their denial. It does take an analytic mind to contemplate and to see the linkage that exists from early childhood. The inclination toward violence is in place developmentally by age three. If it goes undetected, the rage festers below the radar until it bursts out during adolescence or later to the shock of everyone. This is similar to the personality development of the serial killer, to cite only one example. During this early time frame the terrorists are not developing empathy, usually something that occurs between the mother and the baby in their relational bond.
The personality is essentially “set in cement” by age three. This also takes into account genetic predisposition along with the neuroscience of the brain, which also plays a major role in violent aggressive behavior. Thus, by the time the child goes off to school, the proclivity for aggressive behavior and violence is already there.
My goal is to engage counter-terrorist experts, policy makers and the general public with these tools to help understand the intricate interplay between early childhood development, the devalued hated object of the female and its ramifications for violence contributing to suicide bombing. In no way is this meant to blame and devalue the female further because she is the lynchpin for remedying the problem.
What are the mechanisms of a suicide terrorist’s action as an unconscious form of patricide?
Fortunately, Sigmund Freud did not live at a time when there were suicide bombers. If he did, he would probably view these aggressive sadistic/masochistic acts in classic psychoanalytic terms as an extreme Oedipal conflict. In today’s world this would turn many non-psychoanalytic scholars off. It is difficult for many to understand the assumption that the devalued status of the female helps to spawn suicide attacks. It is an unconscious paranoid act of violence, which is the outcome, in part, due to the early bonding relationship between mother and infant. The trauma of her being the target of abuse and ongoing hatred and never having the opportunity to heal from being the shock absorber of such hatred within a dysfunctional family set within a shame honor culture and religion causes significant problems.
