Then Robert Sharf intervened in the discussion:

Dear Iakov:

I think that much of what you say is in error.
I shall address some items:

Iakov (previous): Lloyd, in your  article you have only proved my point:
that  Moslem  women are very abusive  towards their daughters, but they
rejoice  when  a son is  born.
So, it  is daughters who are supposed to  retaliate  towards their mothers,
not  sons, who are so welcome.

Bob: It does not follow from the fact that the birth of boys is celebrated
that the boys are "welcome," that is, not subjected to abuse.
On just a very common sense level, you must see that adjusted people would
value all children equally regardless of gender and a preference for sons
cannot portend anything good. This special status surely betrays the
intention to use the child for the parent's needs and not an attitude of
nurturing towards the child.
Most societies have had higher rates of infanticide for girls and thus have,
in a manner of speaking, "preferred" boys. Yet we cannot expect that mothers
who are killing their female children are going to be nurturing towards their
male children. The abuse may take different forms, but it cannot really be
that parents detest some of their children and nurture others. Of course,
children may be treated differently and some may be more abused than others,
but parents who are abusive are using their children for their own parental
issues, including the children they "prefer."
You might also wish to consider that this show of welcoming male children may
be a reaction formation, as I think Eric was suggesting.

Iakov (previous): Sons are abused by their fathers, not  by their  mothers,  so they
should be expected  to be  women lovers  and men  haters.
They are exactly the  contrary.

Bob: It seems here that your are admitting the premise: men who are abused by
their mothers will hate (fear) women. So the fact that these people hate
women is evidence that they have been abused by their mothers.

Iakov (previous): They developed into hard core psychotic homosexuals.

Bob: Your thought here seems to be that boys who were mistreated by their
fathers would hate men, but homosexuality is the love of men. Of course, this
is way off the mark. Boys who are nurtured by their fathers do not,
therefore, "love men" and so grow up to be homosexuals.
Boys who are nurtured by their fathers (and mothers) have more respect for
women. The etiology of homosexual behavior is generally thought to be in the
mother-child diad.
You seem to be coming from a position of drive theory in which their is a
classical oedipal situation. In this case, if the mother is "loving," but the
father figure is absent, this will create problems and possibly homosexuality.
I'll say more on this below.

Iakov (previous): What  I said is  not that Moslem  women  are perfect mothers to sons.
I  said that the source of  misogyny is not in what  mothers  do  to their
sons,  but in  what they represent  to  them. In  this case  they represent
their  own lust  and  sexuality.
The  problem is  that, due  to  the  absence of  the father, who  is the
inhibiting  instance, the child is  overstimulated  by  the presence of the
mother.  The more a  loving  mother  she is, the worst  will be the burden on
 the  poor child  that have  no father  to inhibit  his  sexual drives.  He
will be  compelled  to be his  own  Super-Ego, which,  at   3 to 5  years of
age, it is impossible.

Bob: Stevens sets forth a similar argument in his study of the Oedipus
Complex. In order to do so, he must engage in the same reversal. He overlooks
maternal abuse or posits that it is a product of the child's "seduction" of
the mother.
The kind of evidence Lloyd is giving is of actual maternal abuse, not "loving
care."
I would like to put a question to you. What do you imagine WOULD BE the
result of actual maternal abuse? Do you concede that such is possible?
Wouldn't it be the very fear and hatred of women (and also idealizing) we are
talking about? A society in which mothers were abusive would look very much
like a society in which mothers are "loving" but father figures are absent.
Does this not suggest that the oedipal schema is just a way of covering up
maternal abuse?

Iakov (previous): So, everything, including  your  own article,  is leading  to  an
opposite  conclusion to your own.
Moreover,  yourself have  proved in a  very convincing  way, in  your
extensive precious  work, how  much  German women had  abused their  sons,
and how much Japanese women  were and are  terrible mothers, and Russians,
and Balkan, that you have  convinced me.
So, I desperately  tried  to  find  German, Japanese and Russian  women
wearing veils and Chadors,  and  deprived of medical  care, and secluded in
their home, awaiting to  be  beaten  to death....but I did  not  find  them.
On the contrary, I  found  that the Nazis organized orgies,  that the
Japanese had  "comfort women", that the Soviets enhanced women  rights,
while  they  were sending everybody else into  Gulags.
So,  paradoxically,  it seems that the more  a  woman  has abused  her sons,
the more she is  appreciated as object  of   lust,  and,  in  the  case of
the Russians,  even of  respect.

Bob: This is extremely inaccurate. Of course, all of the societies you
mention had abusive mothering and all were misogynistic.
Have you not seen the studies of the fantasies of German men. They are full
of rape, bondage, and homoeroticism. Nazi Germany was hardly a bastion of
women's rights. Orgies are indicative neither of an adjusted sexuality nor a
value and respect for women.
Japanese women are similarly not respected or valued. They have been forced
into traditional roles and only know have a nascent women's movement.
The fantasies of Japanese men are also full of rape and homoeroticism, as Ken
Adams has documented. Japanese pornography is full of images of bondage and
rape and schoolgirls. The Japanese invented a special pornographic genre
(called bukkake) in which scores of men congregate around a woman (often
dressed as a schoolgirl) and masturbate themselves and ejaculate on the
woman's face. The Japanese have "comfort women," mistresses, and prostitutes
and quasi-prostitutes because the wife (mother figure) has not been a love
object. Indeed, very often the "prostitutes" are idealized and are not
employed for sexual purposes.
The soviet revolution resulted in a brief period of sexual revolution and of
advances for women. However, there was a terrible backlash against this,
which is part of the reason for the gulags. By the time of Stalin, the sexual
revolution was over as was the period of women's rights. Indeed, it was one
of the great failings of the revolution that it did so little for women's
rights. Under Stalin there were even purity crusades and the USSR became very
puritanical--outlawing even soft core pornography--just as many Islamic
peoples do.
All of these people had abusive mothering which resulted in misogyny and a
maladjusted sexuality full of rape fantasies and other aggression where
sexual thoughts could be expressed, or else where sexual expression was
severely proscribed. The Islamic countries certainly fit this pattern.

Iakov (previous): Your theory is very  nice, but it  seems  to me that it has  more
holes than a sieve.

Bob: I am wondering what it is, then, that you find so "precious" about
Lloyd's work?

Iakov (previous): As for your  suggestion to enact  a Marshal  program  for
Afghanistan,  as  America  did  after  WWII, I just  remind  you that  the
Americans,  then,  first destroyed  the Nazis, AND  the Japanese (with no
less than  an  atomic  bomb), and only afterwards they enacted  the Marshal
program. Not  the  other  way around. May be it seems  to you a small detail,
 but it  is not.
Moreover, in real life, if you enact  a Marshal plan, before  destroying  the
 terrorists, you will  have  only more  terror, this  time paid  by  your
own  money.
Fortunately, nobody in the State Department is listening  to  you, because,
otherwise, the  next ones to  wear  veils and chadors  will be  American
women.

Bob: Lloyd is not talking about a literal Marshal plan, but one which
stresses childrearing. Lloyd added this idea in response to some objections
(by myself and others) to his article. I did not want to keep harping on the
article so I did not say anything at the time. However, I think this addition
did not help the article but only makes it appear paternalistic and I would
advise Lloyd to remove it.

I find it difficult to believe, Iakov, that you are contending that Islamic
abuses of women are a product of a society in which mothers are too loving.
One thing that is interesting about this is that the drive theorist is quite
willing to look at parental behaviors as an important etiological influence.
To wit, mothers may be too loving and fathers may be absent or abusive. These
can have a negative effect on the development of the child. Why not just look
at the evidence for abusive mothering and recognize that this is where
misogyny is rooted?

Best,

Bob
From: <Psychogenics@aol.com>
 

I responded:

Dear Bob,
you wrote:

>
> Bob: It seems here that your are admitting the premise: men who are abused
by
> their mothers will hate (fear) women. So the fact that these people hate
> women is evidence that they have been abused by their mothers.

Iakov:
My premise was that every man who is shot in the head dies, but that not
everybody who dies is shot in the head.
I.e: men who had been abused by their mother will hate women, but not every
man  who hates women it is because he had been abused by his mother.
Hating women does not necessarily point to mother-abuse,and I
explained what it is the main cause of misogyny.
A man can be a misogynist even if he had a loving mother.
Besides, I don't understand what kind of evidence is this, that you declare
guilty a person, man or woman, on the grounds that others hate him.
Moreover, psychoanalytic experience points to the fact that men who had
been abused by their mothers will express their hatred in other forms than
sexual Puritanism. They will take their revenge mainly underperforming in
bed. For sure not covering women with veils and chadors.

>
> Iakov (previous): They developed into hard core psychotic homosexuals.
>
> Bob: Your thought here seems to be that boys who were mistreated by their
> fathers would hate men, but homosexuality is the love of men.

Iakov:
I underlined in my previous posts that I am speaking of lost object
homosexuality, which is the nucleus of every paranoia, and not of
pre-Oedipal polyformous homosexuality, which is indeed love for men.
Lost-object homosexuality is an ambivalent condition of love for the lost
object, and hatred for the same object because of the abandonment. This
kind of homosexuality, which is always latent, and never acted out in
actual sexual relationships, it is very dangerous because the element of
hatred, and I should add, of ferocious hatred, is the one which is
split, projected into others, and acted out.
Bin Laden is this kind of person. He loved his father but he also hated
him because he was not there. This is not the normal aggressiveness of the
child for the father at the Oedipal stage, which can be mediated and
managed, but the hatred for something extremely needed and lacking. He
split: the love became Faith in Allah, the hatred became hatred for the
Infidels. This is hard core psychotic homosexuality, because the outcome
is paranoia and hallucinations. He is hallucinating the lost object, the
Father, and he is in a paranoid condition towards those whom he elected as
his enemies.

 Bob:
Of course, this
> is way off the mark. Boys who are nurtured by their fathers do not,
> therefore, "love men" and so grow up to be homosexuals.
> Boys who are nurtured by their fathers (and mothers) have more respect for
> women. The etiology of homosexual behavior is generally thought to be in
the
> mother-child diad.
> You seem to be coming from a position of drive theory in which their is a
> classical oedipal situation. In this case, if the mother is "loving," but
the
> father figure is absent, this will create problems and possibly
homosexuality.
> I'll say more on this below.

Iakov:

Ibidem

> Bob: Stevens sets forth a similar argument in his study of the Oedipus
> Complex. In order to do so, he must engage in the same reversal. He
overlooks
> maternal abuse or posits that it is a product of the child's "seduction"
of
> the mother.
> The kind of evidence Lloyd is giving is of actual maternal abuse, not
"loving
> care."
> I would like to put a question to you. What do you imagine WOULD BE the
> result of actual maternal abuse?

Iakov:

Premature ejaculation, incapability to reach an orgasm, Narcissism, some
regression into anal sadism. For sure not sexual Puritanism

Bob:
Do you concede that such is possible?

Iakov:
Of course, but the outcome would be more like the one in Nazi Germany:
Narcissism and anal sadism are the consequences of maternal abuse.
Those people, out there, the Bin Ladens the Sadam Husseins, the Arafats
and their gangs are not Narcissists nor true anal sadists. They are oral
sadists and borderline. This is a consequence of the lack of the Reality
Principle, which is represented by the father.
They have indeed regressed into a placental condition of amorphous
hatred. Because of the absent father, not because of the present mother.
Even Pinocchio descended into the belly of the whale (the placenta) because
he missed his father. There he met him.
So, I have never denied the obvious existence of maternal abuse, but to
shout "Mothers, Mothers  !!!" every time there is an act of brutality, a
war, or an abuse, it is simplistic, unprofessional, and untrue.
 

Bob:
> Wouldn't it be the very fear and hatred of women (and also idealizing) we
are
> talking about? A society in which mothers were abusive would look very
much
> like a society in which mothers are "loving" but father figures are
absent.
> Does this not suggest that the oedipal schema is just a way of covering up
> maternal abuse?

Iakov:
Untrue.
It is not the oedipal schema which is a cover up for maternal abuse,
but it is the maternal abuse theory that is an instrument for repressing
the regression from the Oedipal bottleneck as the primary cause of every
pathology. Earlier abuse becomes relevant only if there is a
regression due to an obstruction of the Oedipal channel. An obstruction of
the normal evolution may be because of maternal abuse, at the Oedipal
level, and then we shall have Nazis, Narcissists and anal sadists, or
because of the absence of the father, and then we shall have oral
sadists, borderlines and re-enactment of the fetal trauma. The regression
due to the absence of the father will be to a much deeper level,
because there is no more Reality Principle to anchor the personality.

> Bob: This is extremely inaccurate. Of course, all of the societies you
> mention had abusive mothering and all were misogynistic.
> Have you not seen the studies of the fantasies of German men. They are
full
> of rape, bondage, and homoeroticism. Nazi Germany was hardly a bastion of
> women's rights. Orgies are indicative neither of an adjusted sexuality nor
a
> value and respect for women.
> Japanese women are similarly not respected or valued. They have been
forced
> into traditional roles and only know have a nascent women's movement.
> The fantasies of Japanese men are also full of rape and homoeroticism, as
Ken
> Adams has documented. Japanese pornography is full of images of bondage
and
> rape and schoolgirls. The Japanese invented a special pornographic genre
> (called bukkake) in which scores of men congregate around a woman (often
> dressed as a schoolgirl) and masturbate themselves and ejaculate on the
> woman's face. The Japanese have "comfort women," mistresses, and
prostitutes
> and quasi-prostitutes because the wife (mother figure) has not been a love
> object. Indeed, very often the "prostitutes" are idealized and are not
> employed for sexual purposes.
> The soviet revolution resulted in a brief period of sexual revolution and
of
> advances for women. However, there was a terrible backlash against this,
> which is part of the reason for the gulags. By the time of Stalin, the
sexual
> revolution was over as was the period of women's rights. Indeed, it was
one
> of the great failings of the revolution that it did so little for women's
> rights. Under Stalin there were even purity crusades and the USSR became
very
> puritanical--outlawing even soft core pornography--just as many Islamic
> peoples do.
> All of these people had abusive mothering which resulted in misogyny and a
> maladjusted sexuality full of rape fantasies and other aggression where
> sexual thoughts could be expressed, or else where sexual expression was
> severely proscribed. The Islamic countries certainly fit this pattern.
>

 Iakov:

Still, the Talibanis do not organize orgies, as Russian women do not wear
veils and chadors.
 

> Bob: I am wondering what it is, then, that you find so "precious" about
> Lloyd's work?
>
>
Iakov:
He described to us the conditions in the placenta. It is like the
diary of an explorer, who is there, and therefore he can describe so
well the details of the place.
However, it does not mean that everybody has to regress until the bottom
of the well . It happens when there is no Father figure to prevent the
fall.
This is the reason for his rage and your uneasiness every time I mention
The Murder of the Father and the Oedipus Complex.
Not to mention, of course, that he delisted me on the grounds that I
was intriguing for his assassination, only because I analyzed the group
fantasies of the list, and I reached the conclusion that, in that context,
(IN THE CONTEXT OF GROUP FANTASIES), he represented the primeval father,
who had been assassinated because of his abusing of the horde.
He could accept or he could reject my exposition, but the rage and the
paranoid hallucination were very interesting indeed.

In short: I have never denied maternal abuse, but this is exactly NOT
the reason for misogyny, and I explained why, in my opinion, it is so.
The reason for misogyny is in the sense of guilt of the child for his
own erotic drives towards the mother. The more he is abused or
abandoned, the more acute and exacerbated this sense of guilt will be,
to the point of getting unmanageable and overwhelming.
The abandonment by the father is the primary cause for which this sense
of guilt becomes unmanageable, because the father represents the inhibitory
instance and the model for identification. Left alone with his unmanageable drives the child will become
a misogynist.
In this way I can understand what is happening in the Islamic society,
while, shouting indiscriminately "maternal abuse, maternal abuse", it
does not explain all the differences between different societies, nor the
difference between different pathologic symptoms.
Moslems are not Nazis, and Nazis are not Japanese, and a neurosis is not
a psychosis, and a Narcissist is not a Borderline, as an oral sadist
and a placental condition are not an anal sadist.
This story of maternal abuse has become some sort of magic formula, that
explains everything: it doesn't.
It explains some things, but doesn't explain others, even more.
severe. More than that: it has become an apotropaic amulet against
Freudian theories, the Murder of the Father and the Oedipus Complex.
And this is the gravest of all.
It is a New Testament, which came to displace the Old one.
However, not everything new is better than what it came to replace.
There is another point, just as dessert: this New Testament, like the last
New Testament that we know, is centered around the figure of the Child.
The Old Testament spoke of the Father
The new one spoke of the Son.
Freud spoke of the Murder of the Father and the Oedipus complex.
DeMause's PH speaks of the Salvation that will come from the Child and the
Son.
St.Paul said that he did not come to destroy the Law, but it is exactly
what he has done.
PH claims that it is not against Freud's theory, but the repression is
total.
This is the first time that Bob or any other psychohistorian has come into
the open, and has said that the Oedipus complex is outdated, not good
anymore. Even worse: it is a lie.
Now the "True Israel" is deMause PH, not the old Freudian psychoanalysis.
The chosen people have migrated westwards, and America is the new
Promised Land with its message of salvation through the Son.
I don't know yet what exactly all that means, but must be there some meaning.
Perhaps deMause PH is perceived as the answer to a New Continent, which is
living through a condition of malaise and uneasiness as for its roots
and its own identity.
And identity, as we already know, is the Name of the Father.
It has something of the same malaise that brought Christianity to the
ancient world, as an answer to the cultural crisis of the Hellenized East
and West. Interestingly, even then the baricenter moved westward.
The syncretism of the Roman world, which, like America today, was a
pluralist multicultural environment, needed a new message, and that too,
displaced the Father in favor of the Son.
So, there must be some linkage between a crisis of identity and a new
message of Salvation, that will be brought by the Child.
As we know, fetuses and little children have no identity, because
identity is a consequence of a mature Ego, which is achieved only at the
Oedipal level, through a compromise and an identification with the father.
By putting the emphasis on fetuses and little children it is like saying:
we refuse the identity of the father, we want to be identified as
pre-Oedipal children.
However, this is a contradiction in terms. Fetuses and little children have
drives, but not an identity. So, all this story it is the saga of the
ideology of lack- of-identity.
And like the Christian saga, it must compensate promising eternal life, in
PH  case, promising a perfect world, if only the Kingdom of the Child
will be secured. In both cases: Paradise and the perfect world if we
behave ourselves.
The methodology too, is very similar. First the dogma, and then the
findings to prove it. First of all: where there is violence there must be
maternal abuse.
If I find a case where the violence is the product of  something  else,
as the absence of the father, they assure me that there is maternal
abuse too. May be. But why violence must be dependent on the latter and not on the former? They don't go into the field and bring back everything that they find.
They come back with only what they were searching for in the
first place.
In the same way, I can state that violence is because of the presence of
rats.
If I go out and search for rats, everywhere there is violence, I'll come
home with a lot of rats. And I'll have a lot of "evidence" that
violence is always the consequence of the presence of rats.
In all this Islamic affair no psychohystorian has found that Saddam
Hussein, Arafat,  Bin  Laden, Koumainy where orphans of fathers (except
Joan  Lachkar, who is always brushed aside because she occasionally dares
mentioning the Oedipal complex), no one has found that the Islamic
society is one where fathers are absent. Of course not: they were not
searching for absent fathers, so they did not find them. They are searching
only for abusing mothers, and of course, they will always find them, as
I'll always find rats, if this is the only thing that I am searching
for.
Freud has worked as an analyst for 60 years, and he changed his mind many
times, because he had not a dogmatic, a priori, assumption that he
wanted to prove. As his finding unfolded he changed his mind and his
theory.
It is very interesting to follow every stage and how he gathered evidence.
If I take PH, I find a list of a priori assumptions, and I must say
"amen to that", otherwise I am not considered a psychohystorian.
The outside reality is always bent to the theory and not the other way
around.

It is very bad, my friends, very bad.

All  the best

Iakov

Then Lloyd wrote an article

Lloyd wrote:

Watching on MSNBC last night a program featuring a number of
Palestinian terrorists who had been unsuccessful in blowing
themselves up after they wrapped the bombs about them and pushed the
button.

I was again impressed how they confirmed over and over again that
their suicidal terrorism was a result of their lifelong search for
love.

Not one mentioned any political event, anything any Israeli or
American did, anything about getting virgins in heaven, any of the
myriad of political complaints or rewards mentioned in the media and
in academic studies.

All were certain "the moment your first blood spurts out, all of your
sins are forgiven" -- surely a result of feeling they were sinful in
childhood.

All looked only to one thing: getting LOVE from Allah (early
caretaker, whether mommy, grandmother, aunt, any of those unloving
members of the gynarchy where they spent their early years.) All
idealized them: "I'm going to meet the Lord of the universe." All
betrayed the infantile origins of the fantasy: "We all appear before
God naked." All imagined they would still be around to watch their
parents be sorry they had killed themselves for them: "Every time my
father sees my photo, he'll cry." And all were cries for the love
they had missed all their lives.

Lloyd

My reaction was as follows

Iakov:
He says: "getting LOVE from Allah", so, he got it right at last, but immediately he explains: "(early caretaker, whether mommy, grandmother, aunt, any of those unloving)", so Allah, who  obviously  represents the figure of  the  father, becomes mommy, grandmother, aunt.
Why Allah cannot  stay Allah (a  father figure), but  MUST  be mommy, grandmother and aunt, it is a  mystery.
So, the obvious becomes distorted in favor of his theory.

The terrorist himself says: "Every time my father sees my photo, he'll cry.".
So, the terrorist himself says that  this is a dialogue with the father.
 Why Lloyd does not believe him? Does he know better than the terrorist himself?

Iakov Levi
 

Another member of a former Psychohistory list, Harrold Forsythe, intervened in the discussion

  I only reply because I have somehow been put on the distribution list for
this discussion.
  Astounding!  The interviewees say "Allah" = father, but the analyst says
it is really mother, g-m, aunt, etc.  The problem is, of course, that
the analyst thought it was mother before the interviewees spoke.
The analyst has always thought this.  What evidence then would
disprove/falsify the a priori notions of the analyst?  Anything?
  Family structure is certainly important in human history and it has
been improperly ignored by many historians.  But this discussion,
which has no doubt gone on for the 18-20 months since I was
involved with it, continues in its sterile metaphysical rut.  Do
Muslim males from polygynous households, where presumably the
mother has more isolated authority over the children, tend more
often to become terrorists than those from monogamous
marriages?  Does African (Islamic) polygynous family structure
differ from that of Arabs, Azerbijanis, or Persians?  Did the
kamikaze pilots exhibit similar psychological profiles to Palestinian
fighters and Taliban/Al Queda militants?  Where is the history?

Harold
From: Harold S. Forsythe <hforsythe@FAIR1.FAIRFIELD.EDU>

And then another member, Telmo Escobar, wrote:
 

On Wed, 24 Oct 2001, iakov levi wrote:

> Lloyd wrote:
>
> Watching on MSNBC last night a program featuring a number of
> Palestinian terrorists
>
> they confirmed over and over again that their suicidal terrorism was a
> result of their lifelong search for love.
>
> Not one mentioned any political event
>
> were certain "the moment your first blood spurts out, all of your
> sins are forgiven"
>
> getting LOVE from Allah (early caretaker, whether mommy, grandmother,
> aunt, any of those unloving members of the gynarchy
>
> "Every time my father sees my photo, he'll cry."
>

> Iakov:
>
> Why Allah cannot stay Allah (a  father figure)
>
> the obvious  becomes  distorted in favor  of  his theory.
>
> the terrorist himself says that  this is a dialogue with the  father.
> Why  Lloyd  does not believe him? Does he know better than the
> terrorist himself?
>

 Hi, Iakov and all. Sorry that, of lately, I've been often hurried and
short of time to reply.

 I like your efforts to address facts from a different perspective. About
the present discussion, I'm still not convinced.

 Let us address the question you pose: who knows better? The terrorist
himself, or Lloyd?

 Lloyd, surely. For any of us, our own motivations are difficult to
understand, maybe the harder thing in the world to understand. Other
persons tend to perceive, about me, things I couldn't possibly see. And, I
bet, suicidal terrorists must be a field more blind in this respect.

 So, my reasoning is that Lloyd surely knows better not because Lloyd is
Lloyd, but because the suicidal terrorist is a suicidal terrorist.

 I bet this answer doesn't satisfy you. So, let us pose the problem in a
more general form: why Allah cannot stay Allah?

 My answer would be that the existence of such entities (gods and the
like) is at least doubtful, so "Allah" is something that demands
interpretation. True, I'm saying the obvious; yet, don't forget, suicidal
terrorists presumably would say otherwise. I'm restating that, in my view,
they don't know better.

 So we have to address the ultimate question: why "Allah" doesn't mean the
father?

 But I don't deny that Allah is the father. My idea is that this answer
still is provisional, much like saying that Allah is Allah. What is the
"father", after all? As you have emphasized, the father -the real guy that
fathered the boy- has been an absent figure. This for current suicidal
terrorists, and for almost everybody in any time.

 I'd like to say that one of the many revolutionary ideas implied in
Demause's work is that actually the "father" is secondary
elaboration. "Gods" are really godesses. Lacan could have in mind
something similar, I guess, but I'm not sure because French philosophy is
a bit extravagant and beyond my current ability to understand.

 -Telmo-

From: Telmo Escobar <telmo@mate.unlp.edu.ar>
 

I responded as follows:

Hi Harold,
Good to hear from you after such a long time.

You wrote:
Astounding!  The interviewees say "Allah" = father, but the analyst says
> it is really mother, g-m, aunt, etc.  The problem is, of course, that
> the analyst thought it was mother before the interviewees spoke.
> The analyst has always thought this.  What evidence then would
> disprove/falsify the a priori notions of the analyst?  Anything?

Iakov:

You pointed to the real issue. If the analyst thought a priori that Allah is
really mother, g-m, aunt, he cannot be an analyst.
The only way to analyse an issue, it  is forgetting what we think that  we
know. Otherwise we shall find not what is there, but what we have inside.
Until  the 11th of September I did not know that the source of  Islamic
terrorism is in the polygamist structure of the family and in the absence
of the father. I had never thought about that.
I  was very surprised in making this discovery.
How I discovered it?
I began listening.
First the CNN. One pseudo socio-economic analyst said: "of course, it is
poverty ! The gap  between rich and poors, between East and West."  And
brought a  lot of "evidence" for his theory.
So, I went to the poor,  and I  found one billion Indians that do not
throw themselves into the WTC with two Boing 767 loaded with gasoline, only to make a point of hatred.
Therefore it cannot be poverty.
Then I thought: "of course, the poor general psychogenic status of
Moslems!". But I found that this is not a peculiarity of Moslems. There
are and there were a lot of societies were  the general child rearing mode
is very poor, and still suicidal terrorism is not their way of  acting out
their  emotional distress.
Maternal abuse ? Ibidem.
In India maternal abuse is not less than in the Moslem world.
So, this peculiar way of catexis must have its source in something that
is  peculiar of  Islamic society, Arab and non Arab.
And then I found that only polygamy is peculiar to Moslems, I mean in
such extensive way to be an outstanding peculiarity of these societies.
I still did not know what may be the linkage between polygamy and suicidal
attacks of  terrorism.
Looking closely at the situation  in the polygamist  family, I found that
the outstanding feature, which is peculiar there, and not in other
abusing monogamist family, it is the absence of the father: he just does
not live there.
So, the linkage must be that in families were the father is absent,
there is a tendency to suicidal terrorist attacks.
So, I began listening to what they themselves are saying, reading  of
course between the lines, not taking at face value conscious declarations
of intentions, that may well be only rationalizations.
They speak of Allah, not of aunts, the want to reunify with Allah, not
with  mommies. They want Allah to be satisfied of them.
In  their prayers they are hallucinating an absent father, at difference
from Christians and Jews, who perceive their father as present and not
as absent. Christians and Jews reached a compromise with their Father,
each one in his peculiar way. The Moslems, as expressed in their
religion, did not. The only solution to an absent father is to be a
Shahid, a martyr, who dies in the holy war against the infidels.
Then I went to what Joan Lachkar had written about the Islamic saga, as
the saga of orphans, to the fact of the matter that all their leaders
were orphans of fathers, and so on.
Only then, every thread  began to lead in this  direction.  The Taliban
cleric whose split of  the  tongue: "The Prophet was an orphan too", and
many other splits of the tongue and their own unconscious associations
confirmed what I had already found.
Now, Telmo says that Lloyd knows better, because he is not a terrorist,
and  we cannot believe a terrorist, because he will never disclose his
real motivations.
True: we should never take at face values what anybody says about his
real motivations. But we have a very good tool for penetrating his real
intentions. Lloyd himself, and a very long time before him, Freud,  has
shown how we can decode unconscious intentions through analysis of
associations. Chain of associations, to whom the subject (the person we
are dealing with) is not conscious.
Paul Shirley has made a lot of analysis, on list, of segments of speeches
and of declarations. Lawton has taught us how to do it, too. Lloyd has
written about that, and so on.
This is  classical  Freudian  methodology, so that on this point,  at
least, we  agree, and there is nothing new under the sun.
Now, if I take the chain of associations of the the interviewee (the
terrorist), he says:
"LOVE from Allah..."  "I'm going to meet the Lord of the universe"..." We all
appear before God naked." ... "Every time my father sees my photo, he'll
cry."
He is not conscious of  the associative chain between the all elements.
He consciously intended Allah, as a separate entity from his  father,  but
to us,  thanks to the associative chain, it becomes obvious that he is
speaking of the same thing.
And since Lloyd knows very well what an associative chain is, had he not
been fixated with maternal abuse, he would have found it himself, in the
first place.
The problem is of  course, as Harold says, that the "analyst"  had
always "known",  that he was in search for a mother.
This is the reason why I say that Lloyd's methodology is wrong, because he
knows very well what the tools are, but he uses them only when they fit
his theory.
And we had many occasions, on the previous list, to see how this is
acted out,  to  the point of scaring  away  every  person  to whom his own
intellectual integrity is dear.

All the best to everybody

Iakov

BTW:  The words of the terrorist: "We all appear before God naked."  are a
very interesting evidence of the latent homosexual contents of this
Islamic terrorist saga.
He wants to be naked before his father, to be seen and touched, because he
harbors strong latent homosexual feeling towards his absent father.
 
 

Again Telmo Escobar:

Hi, Iakov and all. Thanks for your very interesting ruminations.

>
> You pointed to the real issue. If the analyst thought a priori that Allah is
> really mother, g-m, aunt, he cannot be an analyst.
> The only way to analyse an issue, it  is forgetting what we think that  we
> know. Otherwise we shall find not what is there, but what we have inside.
>

 It's true that one has to keep a mind as open as possible. But also, I
think, we have to cope with the fact that reality -whatever it is- is one
thing and what we have inside -whatever it is- is another one. The need to
accept this duality and live with it, learning from it, is at the root of
Western culture, from the ancient Greek philosophers on. For this
reason, I think your rules for analysts are too demanding. More generally,
I think the only way to interpret/understand anything (for therapists or
for any human being) is trying to compare what we believe we are
perceiving, with some "a priori" knowledge/mythology or how you call
it. Without a code, there is no interpretation.

>
> First the CNN. One pseudo socio-economic analyst said: "of course, it is
> poverty !
>
> I went  to the  poor,  and I  found one billion Indians that  do not
> throw themselves into the WTC
>
> Then I thought: "of course, the  poor general  psychogenic  status  of
> Moslems!". But I found that this is not a peculiarity  of  Moslems.
>
> Maternal abuse ? Ibidem.
>

 You are addressing the issue that there isn't a single "cause" for
phenomena. Again, the impossibility of explaining anything according to a
simple rule, is also a key element of Western philosophical tradition.

 Poverty, psychogenic backwardness, are both significant factors. Yet they
can't be equally significant. If you are deprived of all your pertenences,
due to war, natural catastrophe, gods' bad will, whatever else, I bet you
will not start to sacrifice or sell your children, because you're not
primitive psychoclass. Conversely, when a boxer -or to a slightly lesser
extent a soccer player- gets enormously rich in a few years due to his
sporting talents, it is quite common that he develops an addiction to
drugs, alcohol or another self-destructive behavior, a thing that
surprises the media to no end ("why, when he had all, he had to destroy
his life this way?"); it's plain that person had to live with
disfunctional people during childhood, and this fact is with him his
entire life, no matter how many zeroes has his bank account.

>
> this peculiar  way  of catexis must have its source in something that
> is  peculiar of  Islamic society,  Arab  and non Arab.
>

 Agreed.

> I found that only polygamy is peculiar to  Moslems, I mean in
> such extensive way to be  an  outstanding  peculiarity  of these societies.
> I still did not know what may be the linkage  between polygamy and  suicidal
> attacks of  terrorism.
> Looking closely at the  situation  in the  polygamist  family, I  found that
> the outstanding feature, which is  peculiar there, and not  in  other
> abusing monogamist family, it is  the absence of  the father: he just  does
> not  live  there.
> So,  the linkage   must be that in  families were the father is absent,
> there is a   tendency  to  suicidal  terrorist attacks.
>

 The problem with this reasoning is, aren't there counterexamples? I
think the father were equally absent in other polygamist cultures,
including rural China a few years ago, yet suicidal terrorism was alien
to those cultures.

> So, I  began  listening to what they themselves are saying, reading  of
> course between the  lines, not taking  at face value conscious declarations
> of intentions, that may well be only rationalizations.
> They speak of Allah, not  of aunts, the want to reunify with Allah, not
> with  mommies. They want  Allah to be satisfied of them.
> In  their prayers they are hallucinating an absent father,  at   difference
> from  Christians and Jews, that perceive their father  as present and not
> as absent. Christians and Jews  reached a compromise with their  Father,
> each  one in  his peculiar way. The Moslems,  as expressed in their
> religion, did not.  The  only solution  to  an  absent father is to   be  a
> Shahid, a martyr,  who dies in the holy war against the  infidels.
> Then I went to what Joan  Lachkar  had written about the Islamic saga, as
> the saga of  orphans, to the  fact of  the matter that all their  leaders
> were  orphans of fathers, and  so  on.
> Only then,  every thread  began to lead in this  direction.  The Taliban
> cleric whose split  of  the  tongue:  "The Prophet  was an  orphan too", and
> many other  splits  of the tongue and  their  own unconscious  associations
> confirmed what I  had  already found.

 Comment: your reasoning is quite convincing, but in view of the
abovesaid, I think there has to be another factor here, something we still
don't see. Otherwise we would have data on Chinese suicidal terrorism.
 But, I repeat, my impression is that you have found something. By the
way, suicide, obsession with martyrdom, were also well known tracts among
Christians one thousand years ago, when absent fathers were the rule.

>
> Now, Telmo says that Lloyd knows  better,  because he is  not a terrorist,
> and  we cannot believe a terrorist,  because he will never disclose  his
> real  motivations.
>

 This is not what I said. What I implied is that, I think, suicidal
terrorists aren't aware of their real motivations. Also I stated that this
blindness, to some extent, is present in any human being- terrorist are
just a relativelly extreme instance.

>
> I take the  chain of associations of the the interviewees (the
> terrorist), he says:
> "LOVE from Allah..."  "I'm going to meet the Lord of the universe... "We all
> appear before God naked." ... "Every time my father sees my photo, he'll
> cry."
> He is  not conscious  of  the associative chain  between  the all  elements.
> He consciously intended Allah, as a separate entity from his  father,  but
> to us,  thanks to the associative chain, it becomes obvious that he is
> speaking  of the same thing.

 Agreed. My view is that, saying it's the father, may be superficial.

>
> The problem is of  course,  as Harold says,  that  the  "analyst"  had
> always "known",  that he was in  search for a  mother.

 No! This is THE point. I didn't read what Harold wrote, but the point
is that he -the suicidal terrorist- surely is NOT in search for a
mother. On the contrary, he has to get freedom, he has to become an
individual. By the way, I can't help thinking in those terrible images of
the plane hitting the tower, and thinking that hitting a building is a way
to hit and destroy the mother.

> This is the reason why I say that Lloyd's methodology is wrong
>

 This is also the reason why I feel he's right. In short, we are
"reading" the terrorist syndrome according to different codes.

>
> The words of the terrorist: "We all appear before God naked."  are a
> very interesting evidence of the latent homosexual  contents  of this
> Islamic terrorist saga.
> He wants to be naked before his father, to  be seen and touched because  he
> harbors strong latent homosexual  feeling  towards his  absent father.
>

 Your messages are always very valuable and insighful, and I hope you'll
continue this way. Best regards,
 

   Telmo
 <telmo@mate.unlp.edu.ar>

I responded:

Telmo wrote:

The problem with this reasoning is, aren't there counterexamples? I
> think the father were equally absent in other polygamist cultures,
> including rural China a few years ago, yet suicidal terrorism was alien
> to those cultures.

 Iakov:

I know so little about  pre-revolution rural China, that  at the
beginning I felt that I cannot respond to your wondering.
Then, I suddenly remembered the name of a book, that I  read  at least 40
years ago, when  I was twelve or thirteen.
It is interesting, because I had never thought of this book before.
The title is: "The Good Earth",  by an American-Chineese author, a  woman,
named Pearl Buck. At that time it was a best-seller, but it has never been
mentioned  since  then, and it fell  into oblivion.
If I  remember correctly, the hero of the story,  a Chineese peasant, when
his economic  situation  improved, he took another woman.
I  don't remember  whether she lived with the rest of the family or not, but
I remember that the impression I had was that this decision did not
represented a major change in the structure of the family, and the father
did not cease of  being present, only because he toook another woman. It
was more  like a married man, in America, who takes to himself a  lover. It was
more a bigamy than a real polygamy, like it happens, in contrast, in the Islamic world.
Bin Laden's father  had 10  wives.  There was  no  family structure at  all.
The point is not whether the father has more than one wife, but if he is
present or not.  You mentioned  early  Christianity, where the father  was
absent, in your words,  and there was a fixation for martyrdom, even if the
family stayed monogamist.
When I  saw the connection between poligamy and Islamic terror, I checked
what it is peculiar of  Islamic polygamy, and I found  that there the
father is absent. Polygamy does not cause suicidal terror per se, but only
if its byproduct  is the absence of the  father.
If I remember correctly from the book, polygamy in rural China was not a
widespread custom,  and happened only sporadically.
In the ancient Middle East, there was polygamy among non Arabs, who entered
the region  only in  the 7th century,  but it  was not  widespread. A man
took  at most another one wife, and only very rich men did.
Among settled down peoples the tendency is always towards monogamy.
Polygamy  is a custom of  nomads.
The  Islamic society remained polygamist, even  where they settled  down,
because all their mental  structure remained nomadic.
They are prohibited of  drinking wine, because producing wine implicated
planting vineyards, and therefore giving up the nomadic way of  life.
Even before Islam, the Arabs abstained from drinking  wine, because they
had horror for the cultivator and its ways of life.
The Jews theoretically remained polygamist  until the 11th century A.D,  but
only Yemenite Jews,  who lived  among strongly polygamist  Arabs, practiced
this custom.
The Patriarchs, who were semi-nomads, took  more than one  wife, but this
custom almost stopped entirely after the Hebrews settled down in
Palestine, in the 12th  century  B.C.
Even they were hardly polygamist:  Abraham took another  wife only  at a
very old age, and only because  he was childless. Isaac remained monogamist
all  his life. Only Jacob  took  4 wives, but the Biblical story presents
to us a very present father. Moreover, I have good  reasons to  believe that
his  story is  a  condensation of  more than one  "Jacob".  Jacob being
synonymous of   "Father of  the  tribe".  Probably  every son of Jacob, who
represents one  tribe, had  his own Jacob, as primeval father. It is a very
condensed  story.
It seems to  me that polygamy, as  a way of  life,  is a peculiarity of
Islam, which remained a culture of nomads, even where they settled down.
However, I must admit that not everything  on this issue is clear to me.
For instance, I don't understand why  the Persians, who are not a culture
of nomads, became more  Moslems than  the Prophet himself.
While  the Arabs are mostly Sunnites, the Persians are Shiites, which is  a
branch of  Islam that is much more fanatic and fundamentalist than the
Sunna. Moreover, Persians and Arabs usually hate each other,  and the
Iraqi-Iranian  war is an instance, but on this Islamic wave of terror they
seem  to be in perfect  agreement and in  one mind.
If anybody  can  help on  this issue, it will be very welcome.

Iakov

Then Robert Sharf intervened:

> Dear Iakov:
>
> The way you have pieced this together certainly demonstrates a nimble
> investigative acumen which, along with your willingness to keep an open
mind,
> is most laudable. I would ask you to continue to bring these attributes to
> bear as we consider this issue further.
> We agree that there are certain forms of the family which produce violent
and
> suicidal men. This is a form of the family in which the women dominate the
> domestic front while the men are absent or virtually absent. We (me, you,
and
> Lloyd) agree on this. We disagree on the source of the etiology of these
> violent/suicidal impulses. Lloyd and I hold that these are largely a
result
> of maternal abuse, since paternal abuse comes later in the child's
> development. You hold that it is precisely the father's absence which
> engenders this character due to the oedipal complications fostered by the
> father's absence. Indeed, under these circumstances, you argue, maternal
> abusiveness might be preferable to maternal nurturing--which the boy
cannot
> properly process without a proper father figure. You cite in support of
your
> argument that the terrorists in question believe in a god which is, to all
> appearances, paternal and also that they imagine that they are pleasing
their
> fathers. Further, these are things which seem to contradict Lloyd's (and
my)
> psychogenic view.
> May I propose a test for these competing theories?
> Your theory predicts that where we find families of this sort, we shall
find
> male gods (the idealized absent father), while the psychogenic view
predicts
> that we shall find devouring goddesses (the abusive mother/female
caretaker).
> This family structure may be rare today, but it has been quite common
> throughout history and proto-history. Lloyd and I have called this the
> gynarchy--domestic rule by women with segregation of the adult males--the
> males being the androcracy. This arrangement was once the rule for
humankind.
> What do we find in the proto-historical societies and the ancient
societies
> which had this division? We find images of devouring goddesses. Later, as
the
> androcracy begins to evolve and "patriarchy" begins to strengthen, the
image
> of the devouring mother gets obscured. It is represented by beasts and
later
> still by the gods of monotheism which take on more and more "masculine"
> features.
> The kind of families we see among these terrorists resemble the gynarchies
of
> old, but they have had thousands of years of additional evolution and
> development of the androcracy, that is why the maternal image is more
> concealed. It might be useful for you to see Lloyd's writings and my own
> writings on the subject of the gynarchy and the androcracy. You will also
> discover that Lloyd does not contend that "Allah" is a maternal image
because
> of a prejudice, but because when this form of the family was starkest and
> most unadulterated, the maternal imagery was quite clear. Lloyd is guided
by
> vast historical precedence.
> It seems to me that your oedipal theory cannot account for the fact that
this
> form of family has, historically and proto-historically, been associated
with
> devouring maternal goddesses. Your theory predicts that these societies
(were
> the segregation of men was at least as profound) should have worshiped
> father-gods. But father-gods appear rather late, with the decline of this
> form of family.
> I invite you to consider these facts.
>
> Best,
>
> Bob
From: <Psychogenics@aol.com>
 

My response was as following:
 

Dear Bob,
There is  a basic misunderstanding as for the source of our disagreement.
We don't disagree that the first deity was female, as we don't disagree that
the  primary source of connection  of the human creature with the outside
world (outside himself) is  the mother.
Freud have already wrote about that, back in 1913,  in Totem and Taboo, and, in 1921, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego: "The series of gods, then, would run chronologically: Mother Goddes -- Hero -- Father God" (Postscript, XII B).
I myself have written an essay in  which I prove that  the Biblical Eve was,
at the beginning a fertility  goddess, and  Adam,  who also was a god, came
after her, and the Biblical story has been edited, and the  order of the
events inverted. When I wrote this essay some years ago I knew nothing
about the  placenta, but it  perfectly fits. I can call Eve: Fertility
Goddess  AND Placenta, and nothing changes.
Iahve was at first a son-god, and only much  later he became a Father -god,
removing Mother Goddess  and Son God, from  the scene.
As Theodor Reik  said, when, being still  a child, his grand father told
him the story of Eve, being  born out  of Adam's  rib: "Tomer  Verkehrt !!",
which in  Yiddish means: "The other way around".
There  is  really nothing  new in all that.
Everybody who has basic knowledge of religion and mythology knows that  the
first deity was a goddess, as evidenced also by Freud himself.
You and  Lloyd had not  to write anything  because it has all already been
written in  the last  70 years.
Freud said that all began after the Murder of the  Primal Father by the
horde  of the brothers. Until  then there were only apes, and no religion,
and therefore no gods at all.  After the Murder,  that we can now  call
"the Oedipal level", religion  began, because, out of  the sense of guilt,
there was a regression into a  previous erotic stage of development, which
is  exactly parallel to deMause's placenta.  The placenta, the nurturing
mother,  became the first goddess. Matriarcate was the first  form of human
organization:  a regression into placental emotional contents. The only
thing that can be added to  Freud's  exposition is that  now  we can call
her "placenta",  while Freud did not  explore  psychic life  before  birth,
and therefore he did not call her that way,  but  only "Fertility  Goddess".
This has been Lloyd's major  contribution to the  understanding  of psychic
life.
However,  from here on, in my  opinion,  it has been only a major distortion
of how psychic  life  works,  and I shall explain why.
Lloyd's  theory sustains that, at the beginning, we were all in  the
placenta, and there we acquired  all those psychical  imagos of nurturing
and
poisonous placenta, that he described in his book.
No disagreement  so far.
Then there is  birth and, at least in  the  first three years of life,  the
mother is not only the main and first  caretaker, but usually  the only one.
No wonder that the first  goddess was a female with all the peculiarity  of
the imago of the mother, as  the  child perceived her from the  fetal  stage
upwards.
She  indeed was his placenta, she was  his  breast,  and usually she took
care of him  while,  at the anal stage, he was  sitting on the pot.
No disagreement  so far.
Mother's love, in these first  three years at least, is the  only  human
asset.
And so would have remained, if  we  had remained apes.
But we did not.
After the third year of life begins a stage, in  human  development, when
all the life energies, that until that  moment  had been fixated  first  at
the oral stage, and then at the anal stage, are channeled into the
genitals, and the little child is  sexually aroused, first by every  living
creature, including  pets,  of  which he is particularly  fond at this
stage,  and then by his own  mother, or by the female that  had  taken  care
of  him  so  far.
At  this point our  development diverges from that of apes and other
mammals.
The National Geographic channel has a lot  of programs with packs of
animals, from  apes to  seals,  to other mammal species,  where the
strongest  male keeps  for himself all the females, and kills the young
males who dare to challenge his authority.
In the  same way the little Oedipal  child feels in conflict with  the one,
who he perceives being the sole owner of his mother's body.
The difference between us and other animals, is in  the outcome.
Apes  and seals challenge the strongest male until he or they are
killed, and  the new strongest male becomes the new "Father", and  so
again  and again.
The humans learned to work out a  compromise: the child learns, at this
stage, to identify with his  father, learning  from him what will become
his  social and  ethical values, and the father learns to take care  of
his  child,  instead  of  killing him.
If a father  is a very abusing  one, the compromise  will not work, and
the child will for ever harbor  strong  aggressive  sentiments  for his
father.
The compromise is rendered compelling because, at difference from animals,
where the poppies do  not spend time with, and even  don't know their
fathers, humans,  due to the relatively long  span of  time that they  live
in the family, DO love their father.
This ambivalence of love-hatred, which is  peculiar  only to humans, is the
reason of the compromise, reached during hundred of  thousands of years of
evolution.
Without the love of children for their fathers, we still  would be apes.
So,  AS FREUD SAID, it  is  the  father  who  is responsible for  a happy
outcome  of  this conflict. Because, if he abuses his son, instead of
being  a positive model,  there will  be no  compromise, and the  child
will become a  neurotic or  a sociopath.
So, there  is no need of stating that  the true mythology is only the one
which  tells us of  killing  and devouring fathers  (Cronos),  and the
false one is  that  that tells us of castrating sons, because one depends
on  the other. Without  an abusing  father, there is also no patricide.
For the  females is slightly different, but this is not the place to begin
an essay on that, too.
All  this has  been explained very well by Freud, but I am compelled to
sum it  up again, because Freud's teaching  has been so strongly repressed,
that  everything came out completely  distorted.
Now we can understand why the figure and the presence of the father are so
important, at  the Oedipal  stage, for the mental well  being of the human
creature, even if, until then, the mother had been the main caretaker of the
child.
If the child  never had a loving mother, he  will never  be a  happy person,
he will  harbor resentment  and even hatred for women, but I have already
said more than enough on this issue, and I explained how this hatred  will
be acted  out.
If this pivotal  Oedipal bottleneck is not  passed through, there will be,
as happened to Lloyd's Psychohistory,  a  regression all the  way down  into
the placenta.
So, Bob, there is no point in repeating  again and again  that  the  first,
most  important deity was a female goddess, and that  she is  the placenta,
because we  know that. We agree.  The  point  is that, in a society  who
successfully passed through  the Oedipal bottleneck of evolution,  this
goddess is NO MORE the most important one, she  has been replaced by  a
Father deity, and only  in a  condition of  regression, all the emotional
contents associated with  this female  deity are  re-enacted  again.
If  you  say that  behind Allah there she  is,  the  female primal deity, it
makes  much sense, and confirms  what I have said, because the Islamic
society, being in a condition of regression, due to  the missing father,
is, at the  same time,  re-enacting the  female deity.
This is the way  psychic life works: through condensations, sometime of even
opposite concepts. And this is a very important point, even if Platonic
logic may  have some difficulty in grasping  it.
The young  terrorist, first  of all  spoke  of his father, Allah and so on
and  so on, because HE was the critical missing and  missed object  at the
pivotal  Oedipal stage.
Now,  you can say that behind  the central figure  of  the  father, pivotal
at  the Oedipal level, there is  also the archaic  female deity: This deity
will always be there, in the archaic  levels of the soul. It  makes sense,
even if,  from  the words  of  the interwiee, we have  no  evidence  at
all. But  it  makes sense, because  the young  terrorist, having  regressed
from the Oedipal level,  due to the absence of  the  father, may well be
beginning fantasizing the ultimate form of regression, which is the
placenta.  The  Paradise of the  Martyr is indeed the  placenta, but THERE
he is craving to go, by his own  words,  because he is missing his
father. There he wants to meet Allah.
As I already said, like  Pinocchio in the  belly  of the whale.
There is no wonder if, before committing  suicide, in order to please his
missing father, he is fantasizing to  return into the place from which  he
came, and Allah is also beginning to  transfigure into the craved female
features.
 

All  the best
Iakov

Links:

The Psychogenic Theory and the Perfect Society
Why Islamic Terror Now