ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the psychodynamics that seem to go into forms of extreme violence like terrorism. It explores how these seemingly gender-free dynamics become linked to masculinity. The chapter suggests that national or religious ethnicity or peoplehood can be psychodynamically experienced as cultural selfhood and that, as such, threats to it are experienced directly as threats to the self. It argues that the psychic fault-lines of masculinity and male selfhood express two developmental and fantasy components: These are maleness as not-female, the male self as defensively separate and warding off the other, defensively needing to split self from other if hate takes over, and maleness as adult man rather than boy-child, not humiliated, shamed, or defeated by another man. The worst male violence may occur when fantasies of humiliation by men become linked with fears of feminization and loss of selfhood.
