Page - 175 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Lost by the wayside – overstepping limits 175 existential suffering. This enthusiasm allows the young person to experience a new identity, an osmosis into the common group that affords them the hope of total meaning. Thus, out of a difficult life situation becomes “a sedation of fear, a feeling of liberation and an application of total power” (Bernhama 2017, 45). The jihadist warrior becomes a new person, chooses a new name and assumes the behavior of his/her compatriots in battle, giving up his/her singularity and sub- mitting in blind obedience. With many of those who return, psychological crisis, borderline syndrome or psychotic symptoms can be observed (Ibid, 44). “The jihadist . . . adopts an elaborate collective belief in the identity myth of Islam, nurtured by the reality of the war in which he is meant to play a heroic role, to be rewarded by material and sexual advantages as well as both real and imagined power. This fatal mixture of myth and historic reality is more dangerous than madness.” (Ibid, 49.) We can speak here of a narcissistic madness through ideals. I will here describe two of the case studies of radicalized Austrian adolescents from Schmindiger’s book (Schmidinger 2015, 80ff ). Case study: Abdullah Abdullah comes from a largely secularized Tunisian family and was one of the first adolescents from Austria to join the jihad and be killed in it. His father at first came to Austria alone and worked as a health care aide; his wife joined him five years later. Adbullah was their first son born in Austria, followed one year later by his younger brother. Where they lived in Grossfeldsiedlung, Abdullah learned not only German but also Serbo -Croatian and Turkish (this in addition to Arabic, which the family spoke at home). His father prayed five times a day, his mother dressed in Western fashion, and they occasionally drank alcohol. Abdullah only knew Tunisia from vacations spent there. At the age of 13 or 14, he had no interest in his Arabic roots. At high school he began to be inter- ested in politics, joining other left -wing -tending students who were critical of the United States. Apparently, they “discovered” him as a token Muslim who could be radicalized in the struggle against the FPÖ (the Austrian far -right political party). Although he joined with them in their recreational activities, drinking beer, smok- ing marijuana and gathering sexual experience with girls, he never quite lost his exotic status in their eyes. Only in 2005, when a Danish newspaper published caricatures of the prophet Mohammed, did he feel insulted in his Muslim identity. He took part in a dem- onstration against these caricatures, meeting members of the radical sub -group Hizb ut -Tahrir that propounds draconian punishments against “sodomy”, incest, homosexuality and other divergences from Islam. At the end of 2013, one of his friends went to Syria to fight for the IS. Abdullah’s parents were already concerned in 2014 that their son was being radicalized. They consulted the police, who did not recognize the danger, sim- ply advising them to send their son to Tunisia. They left the police station in disappointment.