Fanaticism

Peter Conzen's Fanatismus: Psychoanalyse eines unheimlichen Phänomens (2005) [Fanaticism: Psychoanalysis of an Eerie Phenonenon] uses a number of case studies to describe fanaticism from a Freudian psychoanalytic viewpoint. The parts of the clinical sections that stand out most for me are the key role played by fixation on Good vs. Evil in fanaticism and his point that fanaticism can be a normal if not necessarily healthy response to relatively short-term conditions or extreme stress.

In psychoanalytic terms, "Fanatismus in seiner ureigentlichen Ausprägung ist freilich Ausdruck inneren Gespaltenseins, das Absorbiertwerden der Identität von hohen ethischen Idealen und gleichzeitig das Fixiertbleiben an starre Über-Ich-Introjekte." (Fanaticism in its most basic characteristic is a clear expression of inner division, of the identity becoming absorbed by higher ethical ideals and at the same time remaining fixated on inflexible superego introjections.)

Psychoanalysis assumes three distinctions in the mind's "software": the id, the ego and the superego. As Sigmund Freud himself explained in his 1926 Encyclopædia Britannica article, "Psychoanalysis":

Mental Topography.--Topographically, psychoanalysis regards the mental apparatus as a composite instrument, and endeavours to determine at what points in it the various mental processes take place. According to the most recent psychoanalytic views, the mental apparatus is composed of an "id," which is the reservoir of the instinctive impulses, of an "ego," which is the most superficial portion of the id and one which is modified by the influence of the external world, and of a "super-ego," which develops out of the id, dominates the ego and represents the inhibitions of instinct characteristic of man. Further, the property of consciousness has a topographical reference; for processes in the id are entirely unconscious, while consciousness is the function of the ego's outermost layer, which is concerned with the perception of the external world.

The superego, in this schema, is an unconscious part of the mind which is the internalization of parental and other social authority, including the conscience but not synonymous with it. In its healthy functioning, the superego tries to restrain the ego from deciding to do prohibited things as well as pushes the ego to do things that it considers necessary. So it would hold the ego back from indulging instinctual impulses toward violence or cruelty, while pushing the ego to fulfil positive duties and obligations.

In Conzen's view, fanaticism involves a division of the superego, in which the evil actions that have to be restrained are experienced not as internal restraints within oneself but as projections onto others, others who must therefore be restrained, attacked or destroyed. So, in examples he uses, those directing an investigation for the Inquisition or staging political show trials may be unconsciously detecting and combating their own doubts and forbidden impulses by projecting them onto the accused. In such cases, forcing the accused to admit their own guilt often becomes a primary and obsessive goal.

The focus in fanaticism becomes not so much the positive goal of the Good itself but on the obsessive hatred of the Evil that stands in the way of that goal. Reflective thinking around the hated object is suppressed by the fanatic. As a process based on fanaticism proceeds, the fanatics come to see more and more people as part of the enemy and become more isolated from reality. Or, to put it a slightly different way, their opportunities and skills in reality-testing can become drastically reduced, producing a fatal cycle of escalation.

In situations of stress produced by traumatic physical experiences, humiliations, sudden disruptions of personal relationships, "people not infrequently react passionately and explosively", writes Conzen. Such short-term moments in which strong feelings of hatred are direct in a concentrated way are instance of the kind of attitudes that become longer and more chronic in fanaticism.

Conzen points out that fanaticism can be and often is a part of a transitional period in a person's life, especially in adolescence and late adolescence. This kind of fanaticism, people usually grow out of it in some form or another. Other people develop personalities that have strong fanatical tendencies. And in cult-like groups or well-organized, "totalistic" mass movements, people can experience a type of induced fanaticism to which they might not be inclined if they were in more normal circumstances.

Conzen discusses several cases in which personal and group fanaticism played a major role: Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement; the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang; Al Qa'ida; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and, the Bush administration's "war on terror". While he is generally careful with his evidence and reasonably sparing in his conclusions, such discussions are an intellectual minefield because of the difficulties of "psychohistory" and of drawing conclusions from individual psychology for group phenomena.

For instance, in his discussion of Hitler's biography, Conzen draws some significant speculative conclusions from an episode in Hitler's childhood to which Conzen refers as the "Rienzi experience" in reference to a Wagner opera. This information comes from a story told by Hitler's boyhood pal August Kubizek in his book Adolf Hitler, Mein Jugendfreund, published in 1953, decades after the event. Brigitte Hamann, a Vienna historian who has researched Hitler's childhood and adolescence in great detail, also credits Kubizek's account of the "Rienzi experience". But it's a reminder that speculating about the psychological condition of even a figure like Hitler of whom we have detailed knowledge nevertheless involves a great deal of judgment on sources which, even if accurate, are not sufficient for a real clinical diagnosis.

Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ennslin, 1968

Conzen discusses in the case of the RAF members the role their images of the Third Reich and their elders' attitudes towards it may have played in their own actions and their understanding of the world. But he seems unaware that in the case of three of the four main founding figures of the RAF - Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ennslin and Horst Mahler - that either they or close family members had some significant direct contact with the "brown" (Nazi) scene. Meinhof's husband Klaus Rainer Röhl was an underground Communist Party member in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as was she. But he remembered fondly at least some aspects of his time in the Hitler Youth organization as a young person. And starting from the mid-1970s he moved to being a hardline rightwinger.

Mahler had also had a more "brown" political orientation in his youth, and he later swung even further to the right than Röhl. After serving prison time for crimes committed as part of the far-left RAF, he later wound up active in the far-right Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) and just this year was sentenced to six years jail time for Holocaust denial (Sechs Jahre Haft für Horst Mahler wegen Volksverhetzung AFP/Google Nachrichten 25.02.2009).

Ennslin's fiancee and the father of her child, Bernward Vesper, was the son of a famous pro-Nazi "blood-and-soil" poet, Will Vesper. She and Bernward actively marketed a book of his father's poetry to the far-right scene in the 1960s, though Ennslin was more generally drawn toward the left.

Conzen finds personal fanatical tendencies in those three as well as the fourth leading founder, Andreas Baader. The ideology of the RAF was a variety of Marxism-Leninism. But it was more directly influenced by the concept that Régis Debray developed as an interpretation of Ché Guevara's approach to guerrilla warfare, which Debray applied more generally to Latin America. In the view adopted by the RAF, revolutionaries in the Third World were at war against world imperialism headed by the US in a system of which NATO and the West German Federal Republic was a part. They saw their role as allies of that revolution in the imperialist world, who would hinder imperialism's operations in the underdeveloped world by striking at them physically in Germany. The also held a variety of Debray's "foco" theory, in which they saw an immediate revolutionary potential in West Germany which they would tap into by starting an armed struggle there. This would force the Federal Republic to drop the civilized and democratic mask hiding what they saw as its true fascist nature, thus polarizing the political situation and drawing more supporters to the armed struggle.

This was a reality-challenged understanding of the situation in both Germany and the world. But, as Conzen and others have observed, the RAF didn't spend a lot of time elaborating political theory. Their focus was very much on the hated enemy, which they saw incarnated in US forces in Germany and in the Federal Republic itself. In the case of Andreas Baader, although he had been hanging around the leftwing scene in Berlin since the mid-1960s, he never gave much evidence of having any well-developed political ideas. He was a narcissistic character who had a remarkable ability to attract intense loyalty from those who came under his personal influence. He and his girlfriend Ennslin were the real core of the RAF leadership until their suicides in 1977.

Conzen also notes that, once the main early leaders had been apprehended in 1972 after a couple of years underground, the RAF, including what became known as the "second" and "third" generations, largely became focused on freeing the imprisoned members of their own organization.

Conzen sees many others in the RAF as being drawn in to a state of induced fanaticism in the cultish hothouse of the underground RAF. He points to the intense pressure, for example, that it took to persuade Susanne Albrecht of the "second" generation to set up the intended kidnapping of her own godfather, an attempt that ended in his death instead. It's also a notable fact that a number of RAF members, after they left the organization, were able to live seemingly normal lives without the fanatical drive with which they operated in the organization. This was true of several "second generation" members, including Albrecht, who were taken in by the East German regime (DDR) and set up in normal lives with new identities there. And it was true of some others who served prison time in West Germany and went on to lead lives seemingly free of the previous fanaticism.

Tags: fanaticism, raf, rote armee fraktion