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Have you met someone you would call a "fanatic"? Such people are obsessed with and rigidly judgmental about one or more topics, causes, persons, or groups. For example, racial, religious, ethnic, and political bigotries can range from mild to moderate to fanatic or zealous. A Guardian personality subself that can cause such obsessive attitudes and compulsive behaviors can be called the Fanatic or Zealot. Its protective role may be to (a) distract inner children from major pain, and/or to (b) provide a sense of belonging (to a group of like-minded people) to offset feeling alienated and alone, and/or to (c) provide the comfort of morally-justified superiority to overcome in-tense primal guilt and shame, an/or (d) provide certainty and security in a terrifying, confusing world. Some fanatics are self-focused and solitary or are "normally social." Others feel compelled to confront people with different beliefs, and aggressively denounce them as "wrong" or "bad," and/or to convert them to the "right" beliefs. The Chris-tian Crusades, the US Civil War, the current terrorism movement, and other bloody national and global conflicts each had famous and unknown people ruled by Fanatic and other false-self personality subselves. The Fanatic subself may work with the Perfectionist, Inner Critic, Warrior, Rebel, Addict, Rager, Magician, and Moralizer subselves to disable the true Self locally or chronically. In some cases, fanaticism may qualify as a mood addiction (to excite-ment + power + purpose). Premise: typical "fanatics" (a) are significantly wounded (ruled by a false self), and (b) don't (want to) know that or what it means. Project 1 in this nonprofit Web site offers a framework for understanding and harmonizing personality subselves and reducing false-self wounds. detail / slides / Project-1 guidebook & links / skeptical? / Q&A / close |
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