RELIGIOUS FANATICISM OR TRANS PERSONAL IDENTITY DISORDER ? 
Our world today is torn asunder by men and women who claim that God is on their side, and who,
secure in the righteousness of their positions, perpetrate acts of violent destruction. Such individuals are driven
by the certainty that they are privy to sacred trut

hs and are therefore morally obligated to do everything in their
power—no matter how many people may suffer—to act upon these truths. Coupled with their inflated sense of
personal rectitude, moral certainty, and ideological purity is a tendency to dehumanize and even demonize those
who oppose them.
Although this disorder can be called “religious fanaticism,” those afflicted need not appear wild-eyed
or deranged; quite the contrary, they can present themselves as thoughtful and responsible people inspired by
the loftiest of ideals. Nevertheless, their absolute confidence in themselves and their cause, their willingness to
create massive destruction for a supposed higher good, and their dehumanization of their opponents, all indicate
the imbalance of a personality disorder. We need not point out specific examples of this disorder perhaps, except
to say that it can afflict anyone, from the person on the street, to the international terrorist, to the leader of the
most powerful nation on earth.
The dynamics that underlie religious fanaticism have been recognized by many psychological thinkers.
For example, C. G. Jung (1966) wrote of “positive inflation,” Alice Miller (1981) described grandiosity used as
a defense against depression, Gary Rosenthal (1987) utilized the phrase “inflated by the spirit,” and Greg Bogart
(1995) warned against “the shadow of vocation.” More recently Robert Jay Lifton (2000) has described this
type of personality structure in his concept of “functional megalomania” that fuels what he calls “the new global
terrorism.”