Desire for a sense of power and religious suicide in psychobiographical research: combining personality and sociocultural theories

Abstract

The article presents two theoretical perspectives that provide a helpful framework in psychobiographical research, especially when psychobiographies concern religious suicide. The first is typical in contemporary psychology, a subjective analysis focused on the individual, looking at life course/lifetime in the light of personality psychology. The second one is represented by anthropological research on the concept of honour-shame and the sociological works of E. Durkheim. Contemporary psychobiography should consider sociocultural context and refer to social sciences (anthropology, sociology). This applies in particular to the psychobiographies of people representing a world of values different from the Western world, i.e. non-WEIRD people. The problem is especially true of monotheistic religions that grew up in the world of honour-shame cultural code (Middle East, Mediterranean culture). The natural human need for psychological power is then woven into a specific set of beliefs and values that may, in extreme cases, favour the decision to commit suicide. Suicide acts seen in this perspective are no longer the act of sick or socially alienated people but often the act of fully healthy, conscious, educated and socially integrated people. Such a dramatic decision may become the only way to regain a sense of dignity, strength and control.

Keywords:

• Self-destructive behaviour
• social significance
• dignity
• honour
• religious violence
• martyr
• individual and social dimension of behaviour

Disclosure statement

The author/s report there are no competing interests to declare. The manuscript is not submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration. The article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Notes

1 This is exactly what happened with the concept of the ‘individualistic self’, the presence of which in a given culture was associated with socio-economic development, prosperity and a sense of happiness (Inglehart & Oyserman, 2004). The individualistic self has become a destination point for a part of the world where this concept was completely alien. It is already known that it has a limited reach (Hamamura, 2012; Peterson & Stewart, 2020).

2 A similar pattern is used in some terrorist groups: The Islamic State (ISIS) was uniquely effective among extremist groups in the Middle East at recruiting Westerners (…) In particular, ISIS utilized a heroic martyr narrative, which focuses on an individual’s personal glory and empowerment (Yoder et al., 2020, p. 1).

3 In Adler’s perspective, suicide is understood as “sabotaged social interest”, as a solution for a person “who in the face of an urgent problem has arrived at the end of his limited Social Interest (…) They come to believe that staging a flawless death is the only way they can restore their sense of control.” Suicide “will achieve literal emotional completeness through self-destruction. The paradox imbedded in these ideas, alarming to a healthy person, seems to guide those with “a heightened feeling of superiority” who are well on their way “to be master of life and death” (Bluvshtein et al., 2019, p. 1–3).

4 The Brentano tradition (Brentano’s School) played a key role in the formation of the European psychology of the first half of the twentieth century. It gave rise to such schools of psychology as Gestalt, the Wurzburg School, phenomenological psychology, the Lvov-Warsaw School and the Dorpat School (Citlak, 2023b).

5 Witwicki is listed as one of the most important Polish psychologists. From 1918 to 1948, he lectured in psychology at the University of Warsaw and was the author of the first Polish two-volume psychology textbook. His theory of the desire for power is the most original theory of the Lvov-Warsaw School, along with Twardowski’s theory of actions and products. He had an enormous influence on public, cultural and scientific life in Poland.

6 The concept of honour is characterised by greater complexity and multidimensionality (Uskul et al., 2023), but here the focus will be only on the foundations of the theory.

7 For a detailed study on suicide in monotheism in light of honour, see Citlak, A. (in press). Suicide among Monotheistic Religions: Between Sacrifice, Honour and Power. Journal of Religion & Health.

8 Goertzel distinguished between three types of suicide: the political strategist (whose goal is to gain influence and power in society), the radical theorist (who lives by ideas and ideology and who wants to draw attention to themselves) and the militant activist (who is aggressive, ready for violence and an activist in the heat of battle). Each is characterised by a different way of achieving a sense of power and fighting for a sense of personal or communal significance: a) real political power; b) identification with a system of ideas and a radical ideology; c) aggression, violence and physical domination (see Bolechow, 2008).

9 This, of course, applies to the fundamentalist circles which accept the idea of jihad in the form of acts of terror. This attitude, as well as the extent to which terror in the form of suicide is accepted, demonstrates great variation across Muslim societies (from ideation to denial).

10 “Escalating persecution made the Old Believers’ theology increasingly apocalyptic, to the extreme of demonizing the Tsar and established church as the Antichrist” (BOKPinnock, 2018, p. 97).

11 The reference to the honour-shame cultural code and the work of E. Durkheim has been made with regard to the discussed problem, although other theoretical proposals, such as Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 2001), and S. Schwartz’s map of cultural values (Schwartz, 2014) can also be relevant.

12 “Perhaps to stop the bombing we need research to understand which configurations of psychological and cultural relationships are luring and binding thousands, possibly millions, of mostly ordinary people into the terrorist organization’s martyr-making web” (Atran, 2003, p. 1538).