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In the summer of 2006, the author received a message that read, Love the Nazis, and KILL THE JEWS DEAD. And that was the trigger that launched internationally known scholar Falk into work on this book. Anti-Semitism has once again become a worldwide phenomenon, growing largely during the last decade of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. Among the spurs for this are the migration of Muslim populations and the ongoing Israeli-Arab wars. In this far-reaching and comprehensive volume, Falk delves deeply into the current events, history, and literature on anti-Semitism, integrating insights from psychology, sociology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and political science. The result ...
This is the first English-language book ever to apply psychoanalytic knowledge to the understanding of the most intractable international struggle in our world today—the Arab-Israeli conflict. Two ethnic groups fight over a single territory that both consider to be theirs by historical right—essentially a rational matter. But close historical examination shows that the two parties to this tragic conflict have missed innumerable opportunities for a rational partition of the territory between them and for a permanent state of peace and prosperity rather than perennial bloodshed and misery. Falk suggests that a way to understand and explain such irrational matters is to examine the unconscious aspects of the conflict. He examines large-group psychology, nationalism, group narcissism, psychogeography, the Arab and Israeli minds, and suicidal terrorism, and he offers psychobiographical studies of Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat, two key players in this tragic conflict today.
This includes the evolution of the Hebrew religion as a projective response to the inner conflicts produced by the human family; the sociopsychological development of the Israelite kingdoms in Canaan; the fascinating duality of Jewish life in the "Diaspora"; and the emotional ties of the Jews to their idealized motherland from the Babylonian exile to modern political Zionism.
Independent scholar Falk analyzes the genesis of Islamic terror from many standpoints, including religious, cultural, historical, political, social, economic and, above all, psychological. Drawing on his training as a clinical psychologist, Falk's writings specialize in psychohistory and political psychology. Here, he examines topics including infantile experience and adult terrorism, the meaning of terror, terrorists and their mothers, narcissistic rage and Islamic terror, and whether terrorists are normal people, as some scholars claim. He also describes the infantile development of terrorist pathology, non-psychoanalytic theories of terrorism, globalization's effect on terrorism, and the ...
Franks and Saracens is the first and only book to examine the Crusades from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis, studying the hidden emotions and fantasies that drove the Crusaders and the Muslims to undertake their terrible wars. Using original documents as well as secondary sources, Avner Falk demonstrates that the deepest and most powerful motives for the Crusades were not only religious or territorial – or the quest for lands, wealth, or titles – but also unconscious emotions and fantasies about one's country, one's religion, one's enemies, God and the Devil, Us and Them. The book demonstrates the collective inability to mourn large-group losses, and the collective needs of large groups ...
An internationally noted clinical psychologist offers readers the first psychological biography of Barack Obama. The Riddle of Barack Obama: A Psychobiography is the first complete psychological biography of President Barack Obama written by a professional clinical psychologist. Covering Obama's life to date, as well as the lives of his parents, grandparents, and other ancestors, this fascinating volume illuminates the personal, professional, political, emotional, intellectual, and creative aspects of Obama's personality, as well as the motives—conscious and unconscious—for his beliefs and actions. Dr. Avner Falk draws on hundreds of biographies, newspaper and magazine articles, intervie...
Agnon’s Story is the first complete psychoanalytic biography of the Nobel-Prize-winning Hebrew writer S.Y. Agnon. It investigates the hidden links between his stories and his biography. Agnon was deeply ambivalent about the most important emotional “objects” of his life, in particular his “father-teacher,” his ailing, depressive and symbiotic mother, his emotionally-fragile wife, whom he named after her and his adopted “home-land” of Israel. Yet he maintained an incredible emotional resiliency and ability to “sublimate” his emotional pain into works of art. This biography seeks to investigate the emotional character of his literary canon, his ambivalence to his family and the underlying narcissistic grandiosity of his famous “modesty.”
This is the first and only book to examine the Crusades from the added viewpoint of psychoanalysis, studying the hidden emotions and fantasies that drove the Crusaders and the Muslims to undertake their terrible wars. The reader will learn that the deepest and most powerful motives for the Crusades were not only religious or territorial - or the quest for lands, wealth or titles - but also unconscious emotions and fantasies about one's country, one's religion, one's enemies, God and the Devil, Us and Them. The book also demonstrates the collective inability to mourn large-group losses and the collective needs of large groups such as nations and religions to develop a clear identity, to have boundaries, and to have enemies and allies. Motives which the Crusaders and the Muslims were not aware of were among the most powerful in driving several centuries of terrible and seemingly endless warfare.
This is the first and only book to examine the Crusades from the added viewpoint of psychoanalysis, studying the hidden emotions and fantasies that drove the Crusaders and the Muslims to undertake their terrible wars. The reader will learn that the deepest and most poweful motives for the Crusades were not only religious or territorial - or the quest for lands, wealth or titles - but also unconscious emotions and fantasies about one's country, one's religion, one's enemies, God and the Devil, and Us and Them. The book also focuses on the collective inability to mourn large-group losses and the collective needs of large groups such as nations and religions to develop a clear identity, to have boundaries, and to have enemies and allies. Motives which the Crusaders and the Muslims were not aware of were among the most powerful in driving several centuries of terrible and seemingly endless warfare.
Although Napoleon Bonaparte has been a favorite subject of biographers for nearly two centuries, to date no full-scale psychobiography of arguably the most compelling, fascinating, and complex leader in world history has ever been published. With Napoleon Against Himself, internationally recognized scholar Avner Falk fills this void. He not only considers Napoleon's intellect but also what use he made of it, how it affected his emotional life, and whether he used intellectualization as one of his unconscious defensive processes. Additionally, he examines Napoleon's ambivalent relationship with his mother, his identification with the &“Motherland,&” and his fits of narcissistic rage, violence, and aggression. Specifically, Falk focuses on his numerous irrational, self-defeating, and self-destructive actions. In weaving in the psychological interpretations that have previously been proposed for Napoleon's actions with his own new insights, Falk has created a most stimulating and original work that sheds much needed light on Napoleon's troubled inner world.