An Integrated Model of Social Psychology Constructs and Psychoanalytical Themes for Understanding the Extremist Mindset.

In their understanding of extremism, social psychologists discuss the processes of social identity formation, self-categorization and categorization of the other. In this paper, we posit that these processes are related to basic, primitive unconscious mechanisms which have been overlooked in the literature on extremism. A bi-disciplinary model for the understanding of the extremist mindset is crafted, integrating the similarities between social psychology constructs and psychoanalytical themes. The proposed model rests on the assumption that there is no competition between the two paradigms.