ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains about a psychoanalytic understanding of the fascist state of mind and its relation to masculinity, or more precisely to masculine anxieties and defences. It also explains about the insidious way in which we can slip from the ordinary to the grotesque, form civilization to barbarity both within the mind and within society following regressive wishes and their perversion. The book includes the insidious way in which people can be seduced to becoming 'someone else', to be reborn, wiped clean and be re-invented following an ideology, a religion or a mere 'fashion'. It examines the relationship of masculinity to fascism, of masculinity to femininity, the relationship of man to the femininity in himself, and the male's relationship to the early maternal object.
