Chuck Strozier Books

The Fundamentalist Mindset

By Charles B. Strozier

The Fundamentalist Mindset

This book sheds light on the psychology of fundamentalism, with a particular focus on those who become extremists and fanatics. What accounts for the violence that emerges among some fundamentalist groups? The contributors to this book identify several factors: a radical dualism, in which allo aspects of life are bluntly categorized as either good or evil; a destructive inclination to interpret authoritative texts, laws, and teachings in the most literal of terms; an extreme and totalized conversion experience; paranoid thinking; and an apocalyptic world view.

What the Critics Say

“This collection is remarkable in both its scope and quality. It includes the most knowledgeable voices, always rigorous and probing, on the overall subject of apocalypticism. There is no other treatment of the subject that integrates its psychological, historical, theological, and cultural dimensions. The volume will surely be indispensable to everyone concerned with this extremely important phenomenon.”

Robert Jay Lifton, author of Superpower Syndrome: America’s Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

 

“Is there a fundamentalist mind-set that leads to violence? The authors of this excellent volume answer yes. Their arguments are so full of insights that they will make this book the indispensable reference for future debates on this subject.”

Marc Sageman, M.D., Ph.D., author of Leaderless Jihad

 

“This book succeeds admirably in laying out a distinctive set of criteria for understanding religious fundamentalism. Its great virtue is the care with which it deploys the methods and concepts of individual psychology in order to distinguish fundamentalist violence from religious faith.”

Constantin Fasolt, Karl J. Weintraub Professor of History and the College, The University of Chicago

“The editors and contributors are to be congratulated for undertaking this interdisciplinary study… there is much here that can contribute to enhanced understanding of new religions and violence.”

Nova Religio

 

“This work will have wide appeal to those engaged in work on religion in work on religion and violence….The weakness of the book is the emphasis placed on the potential dangers of the fundamentalist mindset, with but a fleeting mention of its benefits.”

Joseph M. Kemp, Drew University

 

“[T]his is a very interesting and timely book deserving of wide attention…These are intelligent people, dealing intelligently with a very serious bu slippery subject. What these people have to tell us about the first eight years of their discussion is more than worthy.”

Religion

 

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Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst

Kohut’s “self psychology” re-imagined psychanalysis as a theory and practice based on empathy. Many had flailed at the stout walls of classical ego psychology. It took someone from the inside, a man who at first had firmly embraced orthodoxy, to think things from the ground up,

 

"This impeccably researched book, written in a clear elegant style that clarifies even complicated ideas carries us along like an exciting novel."

– Sophie Freud, American Journal of Psychotherapy