Psychoanalysis, Religion and Islamic Radicalization

The chapter begins with a brief genealogy of psychoanalytic thinking in the broad area of religion. It first looks at Freud’s early modernist dismissal of religion, comparing this with Lacan’s valorisation of the ethical quests that both religion and psychoanalysis are said to share at the heart of their discourse. It then examines Lacan’s later pessimism in opposing the ‘triumph of religion’ in our times to an increasingly uncertain future for psychoanalysis. Moving from a conceptual discussion of these themes to an applied analysis of contemporary challenges, the chapter highlights the contribution of psychoanalysis to an understanding of the aesthetics of violence informing the eschatology of Islamic terror within contemporary global jihadism.