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Abstract
An argument is presented for the reconsideration of amok, shooting sprees, and Islamic suicide bombings as different expressions of a central dissociative psychopathology. These ritualized acts of aggression share an irreducible correlation with Western notions of cognitive and affective aspects of progressive derealization, and can be generally described through diagnostic ethnopsychology, but cannot be well understood without also recognizing their relationships via comparable historical contexts and similar, deeply rooted cultural narratives. Tying these seemingly disparate behaviors together requires a qualified assessment of hypothetical prehistoric human traditions, wherein derealization is presumed to have been an intentionally induced altered state widely conducted as part of (or central to) important rituals, involving long-established psychological processes and concepts that now primarily exist as paler yet still recognizable codes embedded within popular mass media and religious texts.