Page - 174 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

174 Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 81). Thus, a warrior could give himself free rein or be married to a young bride who admires him. For girls, too, much turns on sexuality – in their case, romantic love for an ide- alized hero fighting the enemy infidel: this constitutes an idealization of the girl’s own actions, a notably archaic form of the splitting into good and evil, termed the “paranoid -schizoid position” by Melanie Klein. Many young girls are courted in the Internet under selective “flirt -phishing”; however, with the IS offering a pro- spective groom, instead of his parents. The girl sees herself as a romantic rebel, demonstrating how selfless and sacrificing she is, rebelling against her dull par- ents in Austria. If her hero then falls in martyrdom, another prospective husband is supplied in his stead. A problematic life decision such as the separation from an Islamic husband can also be atoned for through engagement in the jihad. With girls, a pseudo -altruism dominates, the desire to help the “poor child warriors” who are being tortured by the brutal Assad regime. Particularly surprising is the open glorification of violence and cruelty remi- niscent of medieval methods of execution and torture (Benslama 2017). As in childhood fairy tales, beheadings and mutilations occur – this time not in films like Bad Taste (previously described) but in real life, similar to a reality TV show. Murderers are depicted as heroes; they post severed heads on Facebook, accom- panied by a lapidary “Shaytanen (Teufel) slaughtered!” or an appeal to “fill the infidels with fear and horror” (Schmidinger 2015, 829). Indeed, Western states swollen with police and military defenses against terrorism fulfills the megaloma- niacal fantasies of potential and actual perpetrators: after jihadist attacks, Brussels was shut down for days, and Paris descended into a vale of tears and rage. It has become clear that protection against the unscrupulous violence of a suicide attack is an extremely difficult enterprise. Seven young radicals can cause a whole city or nation to sink into fear and horror, as they project their own sense of powerless- ness onto the populace and give free rein to their rage and destructive impulses. Death is glorified as martyrdom; sometimes, drugs are employed to repress the will to live. Concrete stories of adolescents joining the jihad are quite various, but one com- mon thread is a lack of connectedness, security, meaning and belonging in their life situations, things that are promised by the jihadists. Schmidinger cites six factors causing this condition: • Familial problems within destroyed or authoritarian family structures, where affection and respect cannot be learned or experienced • Problems at school, at vocational training or at work • Problems with love or sexuality • Problems related to the meaning of life or identity • Experiences of discrimination • Diagnosable psychic problems When young people are in search of identity, religious enthusiasm and fanati- cism offer an alternative to their feelings of insignificance, shame, failure and