Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism traces the historical and psychosocial development of religiosity and applies anthropological and psychoanalytic perspectives to the understanding of religions, particularly their fanatical and fundamentalist expressions.

Religious ideology, practices and institutions satisfy many human needs, including those arising from our hysterical, obsessional, and narcissistic dispositions: the need to segregate the good and bad aspects of our personalities; to belong to an idealized group; and to feel secure and special by identifying with, or living in the orbit of, a supposedly omnipotent figure. But these needs and their modes of satisfaction are distorted by religions which may then nurture and accommodate malign characteristics, especially in the case of the monotheisms, narcissistic inflation or grandiosity. The book shows how interactions between religious ideology and personal development become intricated in the narcissistic pathology which underlies much of the violence and religious aggression in the world today. It presents both a new account of the historical and psychosocial development of religiosity and a powerful polemic against the religions which delusorily satisfy some of the very needs they create.

The book will appeal to psychoanalysts, anthropologists, philosophers, sociologists, and all those interested in the place of religion in the modern world.

"Psychoanalysis from the first preferred reason over religion, even as it acknowledged religion’s extraordinary powers. Religious commitments, beliefs and practices invest all sorts of human activities; such phenomena do not always admit to their own religious character. In this ambitious, rigorous and polemical book, which draws on an impressive range of scholarship, Tamas Pataki takes up the challenge of analysing and combating the pathological aspects of religions, from the ancient entrance of spirits into human affairs, through the development of the monotheisms, to the unconscious psychic investments that continue to sustain them."

Justin Clemens, associate professor at The University of Melbourne is author of Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy and co-author of Barron Field in New South Wales.

"Pataki is a philosopher who explores the evolution of religion through a critical atheistic perspective pivoting on psychoanalytic object-relations theory. It is this aespect of his thought that provides a much-needed depth of understanding of religious fundamentaism and extremism, the dominant themes of this timely book. Well informed by prehistoric and anthropological scholarship and argued with exceptional clarity, this book offers a sobering critique in the current historical context when much of humankind is becoming overinflated by its divine images and their correlative this-worldy identities."

Dr Jadran Mimica, Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, The University of Sydney and author of Of Humans, Pigs and Souls.

"This remarkable book brings longed-for sustenance to consumers of the new-atheism literature. Tamas Pataki seeks neither to bury religion for its anti-scientific irrationalism, nor to deny its benefits. Rather, he seeks to understand the complex core of its more influential darker side, which is increasingly recruited by destructive socio-political forces reaching into the corners of our lives. Pataki’s multidisciplinary critical engagement replaces the emotionally anaesthetic superficiality of existing accounts with a penetrating philosophical and psychoanalytic exposition of the severe narcissistic character disorder lying at the heart of fundamentalism and religious fanaticism."

Dr Agnes Petocz, Senior Lecturer & Honorary Fellow (retired), School of Psychology, Western Sydney University, and author of Freud, Psychoanalysis and Symbolism.

Tamas Pataki is Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Author of Against Religion, Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, and co-editor of Racism in Mind. He has also published journal articles and book chapters on the philosophy of mind and religion, most recently in The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy.

Against Religion applies a psychoanalytic perspective, though with several novel features, to the understanding of some important aspects of religions, particularly to fundamentalist religions. It acknowledges the good in religion, but argues that this is outweighed by the bad. Religious ideology, practices and institutions satisfy many human needs, including those arising from our hysterical, obsessional and narcissistic dispositions: the need to keep the good and bad aspects of our personalities separate; to feel special and belong to an idealized group; and to bask in the light of, or to identify with, a supposedly omnipotent figure. But these needs and the modes of their satisfaction may become distorted by religions and they may then nurture and accommodate malign characteristics. In this book Pataki argues that those characteristics most germane to understanding much of contemporary aggressive religiosity are best explained in terms of the interactions between religious ideology and narcissistic pathology. The manner in which religion enters into personal development and the ways in which religions can symbolically or delusorily satisfy the very needs they manufacture are explained, as well as the reasons for the continuing resurgence of religion in some parts of the globe. As a result, the book will appeal to researchers, academics and students interested in psychology, philosophy, sociology and, more generally, to those interested in the place of religion in the modern world.

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