In The MATERNAL DRAMA of the CHECHEN JIHADI, Dr. Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin sheds light on the volcanic iceberg mentality of the Jihadi is a psychotic adaptation, a result of children having been treated as objects when they were infants. Underneath the frozen, cold image lies a seething cauldron of rage ready to explode. In this type of society children learn to repress their feelings. As a consequence, internal rage boils within the personality. On one hand, the mother is idealized as a powerful object. On the other hand, her power is perceived as toxic and must be destroyed. The MATERNAL DRAMA of the CHECHEN JIHADI is the first book to examine the impact of shaming practices on the crippling development of a personality, causing it to become radicalized later on to engage in jihad. The terrorist attacks carried out by Shamil Basayev are examined under a psychoanalytic lens shedding new light. The author proposes a unique way to decode his terrifying graphic attacks on a maternity hospital the Moscow Theatre and the Beslan school. The Chechen jihadi has become a brand into its own. These terrorists do not develop empathy due to the position of the devalued female in these shame honor cultures, (specifically Chechen culture and its warrior tradition.) The book also looks at the dysfunctional family dynamics of the Tsarnaev Brothers who carried out the triple Waltham Homicides at the Boston Marathon. A special chapter analyzes the crossover effect of jihadism's political violence jumps categories and ignites and fuels mass murder shooters and domestic violence's murder-suicide. The author also draws parallels to Somali jihadis such as Al Shabaab.
What some readers have said about "The Maternal Drama of the Chechen Jihadi"
The Maternal Drama of the Chechen Jihadi, written by Dr. Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, is excellent. It offers a unique perspective of terrorists and suicide bombers in certain parts of the world. In particular, Chapter 3 examines the correlation between child-rearing and terrorist behavior. This aspect of symbolic culture - and how it shapes future behavior - has often been overlooked by scholars and practitioners. Chapter 3 also signals that readers simply ought to "know their enemy." (Professor Jonathan Matusitz, author of Symbolism in Terrorism and Terrorism and Communication).
"How do mother-infant relationships affect conscious and unconscious behavior? How can shame and trauma in early childhood lead to ruthless violence in adulthood? These are extraordinarily complex questions, debated by scholars since Freud, but Kobrin does not hesitate to boldly tackle them in her thought-provoking assessment of Chechen jihadists." (Professor Adam Lankford, author of The Myth of Martyrdom.)
"An incisive examination into the mind, heart and soul of terrorism, this book takes the Chechen example as a generic and a specific type. From failures of infant bonding between a mother and her two sons to a labyrinthine tunnel of deceit and denial, the road from dysfunctional family in Europe to the explosions in Boston is analysed with deep sensitivity and powerful insight." (Distinguished Prof. Norman Simms of Humanities, Waikato University, author of numerous books most recently a four volume opus on Dreyfus.)
Author Biography:
Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and counterterrorist expert. She is a fellow of the American Center for Democracy and has a doctorate in comparative literature, specializing in translation theory, semiotics and aljamía, Old Spanish in Arabic script, focusing on Islam and Hadith. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Spanish and Portuguese, which she studied in Mexico, Brazil, and Portugal. She also studied Hebrew, receiving a Bachelors of Judaic Studies prior to her doctoral work. Her post-doctoral work included training at the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis, where she became the first woman from the Upper Midwest with a doctorate in a non-medical field to graduate from the Institute. At the same time, Dr. Kobrin was appointed director of graduate studies for the department of comparative literature and also taught Jewish Studies. In the 1980s she independently began to focus on the psychological mindset of the terrorist, drawing from her own "internal terrorist." After the train attacks in Madrid, she presented (in Spanish) to the Madrid police. She has also presented to NATO, as well as to law enforcement and military in Sri Lanka, throughout the United States, England, and Israel. Because of her expertise in this field, she was invited to conduct interviews with Somali prisoners, which led to her becoming a specialist on Somali culture. After 9/11 the U.S. Army at Fort Leonard Wood asked Dr. Kobrin to help them understand the relationship between the devalued female in Arab Muslim shame-honor culture and the spawning of Islamic suicide terrorism. Her analytic training allowed her to develop a theory for the suicide attack that explained its unconscious derivatives within the scope of the family. This was published in her 2010 book, The Banality of Suicide Terrorism, available from Potomac. The Hebrew translation appeared in 2013 with a forward written by professor emeritus Gideon Kressel, one of Israel's leading experts on the Bedouins. Her second book, Penetrating the Terrorist Psyche, published in 2013 and available at multieducator.com, explains the importance of early childhood development and expounds on the onset of terrorism as it occurs during maternal attachment and bonding. It focuses on the interlocking links of domestic violence, domestic terrorism, and political violence. Dr. Kobrin is a graduate of the Human Terrain System program in Leavenworth, Kansas.
