Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin writes about the ideology of jihad as a delusion or "collective group fantasy." She explains that a delusion is a belief or idea firmly held despite "abundant information to the contrary." This involves a "partial or complete loss of reality testing."

Trump and Trumpites suffer from a delusion--that Donald Trump won the election--and should be anointed President. The "anti-vaxxers" share a delusion: that vaccines are dangerous, or unnecessary to prevent coronavirus. Hitler and Goebbels shared a delusion: that Jews were out to destroy Germany, the German people--and the world.

A new world is being born. We may begin to throw out conventional conceptions of "culture" as more or less rational "adaptations." A new world is being born.

Many dimensions of culture build upon--grow out of--paranoid delusions.
Today's world seems crazy or mad. But we don't yet have scientific terms to describe such a world.

And psychiatrists are no help. They pretend that if many people within a culture embrace an idea--it cannot be considered delusional or pathological. They abuse Bandy Lee for telling the truth.

This is the central project for psychologists and social scientists for the next ten years: to discern how forms of culture grow out of (shared) psychotic delusions.

Richard Koenigsberg

PS: Scroll down the page to read more ideas presented in Dr. Kobrin's paper on Jihadi culture--and for information on THE JIHADI DICTIONARY and how to purchase it.

Extracts from: The Violent Brutality of Growing Up in A Shame Honor Culture - Predicated on the Destruction of the Mother and her Maternal Bond. By Nancy Kobrin. 

Delusion: act of misleading someone, early 15c.; as a form of mental derangement, 1550s, from Latin deludere; a false belief that has been accepted by the whole mind as a truth; illusion is a false impression that is entertained provisionally on the recommendation of the senses or the imagination but awaits full acceptance and may not influence action. Phrase delusions of grandeur recorded from 1840.

A delusion is a “belief, idea, or conviction firmly held despite abundant information to the contrary. The partial or complete loss of reality test is the first indication of a psychotic state or episode. Beliefs, ideas, or convictions shared by other people, members of the same collective, are not, strictly speaking, delusions, although they may be hallmarks of shared psychosis.

There are many types of delusions:

1. Paranoid ‒ the belief that one is being controlled or persecuted by stealth powers and conspiracies.

2. Grandiose-magical ‒ The conviction that one is important, omnipotent, possessed of occult powers, or a historic figure.

3. Referential (ideas of reference) ‒ The belief that external, objective events carry hidden or coded messages or that one is the subject of discussion, derision, or opprobrium, even by total strangers.

Folie à Deux: The presence of the same or similar delusional ideas in two persons closely associated with one another. Folie: from French folly: madness. From fou: mad. From Latin follere: to move around like a wind, with no direction. à deux: French, à deux: for two. A shared psychosis.

“The sharing of delusional (often persecutory) ideas and beliefs by two or more (folie à plusieurs) persons who cohabitate or form a social unit (e.g., a family, a cult, or an organization). One of the members in each of these groups is dominant and is the source of the delusional content and the instigator of the idiosyncratic behaviors that accompany the delusions.”

Jihadis exist in a cult. They share their delusions because they are a highly fused group, keeping themselves pure by evacuating their dirty needs onto the other, along with their aggression and rage. They annihilate in order to maintain their dance of delusion as uncontaminated by the other. This is classic paranoia. The “twoness” of such a delusional folly for the jihadi is encountered in the process of “twinning.”

The group acts as one entity and thus is more important than the individual. The concept of group identity is useful for understanding shame‒honor cultures and how the group dominates its members, in particular subjugating women and children. The group unity takes place in a destructive, aggressive way, using scapegoating as a means to solidify and rid the group of opposition and its toxic rage.

The jihadi group self is a collective group fantasy that embraces martyrdom as a defense mechanism in order to preserve the group identity. “The preservation of the collective group self [of the jihadi] becomes more pervasive than life itself.”

This translates into embracing a theology of martyrdom as an excuse rationalization (defense mechanism) to preserve the group by eliminating members who purge the group of its sadism and aggression moment by moment. It is an infinite purging function that entails killing off one of its own and murdering others at the same time.

This unconscious strategy allows the collectivity of the death cult to persist but at its own expense. It is like cannibalizing part of the group self. Individuals don’t exist; they are merely part objects to the group. This is a very difficult concept for Westerners to understand since freedom is linked to individuality.