ABSTRACT
Terror and terrorism confront people with the dark side of human nature. Violence and terror are, according to the reasoning, the result of a lack of mental elaboration (reflection) at both an individual and a cultural level. The danger may be even greater when fundamentalist attitudes and thinking prevail on the scene. Then there is no room for reflection and no room for admitting mistakes. The basic elements in the ideologies supporting the collective fantasies and the individual terrorist mindset show, however, surprisingly many similarities with, for example, Nazi ideology. The political and social processes are important has been obvious in analyses and debates on terror, but the role played by shared psychological processes has been less understood. Werner Bohleber draws on cultural and religious studies as well as on studies from political science in his psychoanalytic study on modern religious-inspired terrorism.
