The Trance of Terror Psycho-Religious FundaMentalism: Roots and Remedies

How do western "life oriented" democracies understand the threatening "suicide bombing" phenomenon which Islamic culture nurtures in recent years" "The Trance of Terror" is the first study that scrutinizes the psychological mechanisms that social systems use to create the robotic person who acts in an automatic fashion in the name of one single truth. The psychological technique which Rotenberg terms "hypnotic mantrism" may be identified in various social processes such as praying, singing and dancing. But it is the ecstatic dimension, claims Rotenberg, that religious despots often use to inculcate fanatic behavior which may even include suicide bombing.