Hypothesizing The Jihadi Maternal Fetal Traumatic Attachment Disorder (JMFTAD)

A Sketch/Food for Thought

War Blog Post #53

Wikimedia images for educational purposes screen shot

A Fetus "Seeking" Attachment, Reflexive or Otherwise . . .

The above image is famous but I use it here to stress the importance of fetal development and its possible ramifications for the jihadi who is born into a shame honor culture. For further information concerning the image Hand of Hope cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_of_Hope

By

Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, Ph.D.

The psychological make-up of a jihadi has been poor understood most especially regarding the importance of early childhood development. As neuroscience dives deeper into the lives of human beings, more undoubtedly will be discovered in the rich field of prenatal psychology. Two giants of the field from a psychoanalytic perspective are, in my opinion, are Ludwig Janus and Alessandra Piontelli. Both have sketched out the psychological movement from fetus to child as reflected in the title of the latter author’s book. However, this developmental knowledge has not really been applied to the terrain of jihad and its jihadis.

To the best of my knowledge though and with the help of an ai review of the literature, the results show that nothing has been written concerning what maternal attachment of a traumatic nature might look like for the jihadis -- those who love death and not life. How does the prenatal period, the earliest period of development, influence the jihadis’ mentality i.e. this drive toward violence and death, body language and a rage that exceeds murder itself made manifest by the jihadi’s behavior later in life?

Granted it is a broad sweeping question, yet it may be asked. What can be observed, however, visually is that jihadis bond violently to us, most especially the suicide bomber who seeks a death fusion with its targeted victims. Three of my books in particular deal with the concept of maternal attachment as symbiosis or maternal fusion: The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth about the Islamic Suicide Bomber, The Maternal Drama of the Chechen Jihadi and The Jihadi Dictionary have focused extensively on the mentality and the body language of the suicide bomber’s death fusion which concretely expresses the wish to return to the womb of the mother wherein all of their psychological and physical needs will be taken care of – the ultimate utopian fantasy, including the well-known paradise of the 72 virgins.

Yet where does this jihadi rage come from which exceeds murder itself and which leads to their quest to fuse so much so that the body must be exploded into body parts causing the dismemberment of its victims as well? In criminology it is know that body parts are a part object representation, i.e. a psychic representation of an unintegrated image of the mother as is known in serial killing because the serial killer never advanced to the stage of separating from his mother.

It is known too that in jihadi shame honor cultures there is an unconscious prohibition against separating from the mother, meaning several things that 1. There is no stage of individuation where one acquires morality and a functioning superego, instead jihadis have a reverse superego, i.e. what is good is bad and what is bad is good. They never learn to see the forest from the trees 2. This unconscious prohibition which propels the jihadis to constantly seek another to attach to, to bolster their fragile undifferentiated selves, hence indicating traumatic bonding. 3. The scapegoating and projection relieve a fragile toxic unindividuated self marginally functional in a herd, fused group and its fused mentality. All these are indicators that perhaps the problem of and the groundwork for the make-up of the suicide bomber does not begin at birth but rather much earlier in the womb during prenatal development. Indeed, the fantasy of the jihadi and his/her true quest which is a return to the womb is an uncanny articulation perhaps of this very time and place.

While it is true that babies are born into language, babies do not comprehend ideologies, and fetuses even less so. Babies and children until the age of three are struggling to integrate three information processing systems – affect, cognition and language. Yet the groundwork for the psychological predisposition and receptiveness to such violent ideologies is probably being laid down in utero on account of unmet psychological and physical needs and subsequently built out during early childhood while the brain continues to unfold and develop. Babies are born prematurely in terms of not being able to be self-sufficient. They must be in a symbiotic [i.e. attached] relationship with the mother just as the fetus was while in utero with the mother.

Briefly traumatic bonding can be characterized by a conjoint attachment or fusion that cycles between sadomasochism, control, hostage taking mentality and submission through abuse, bullying, and violence. I characterized the violence of the maternal bond which must be destroyed by the jihadis in “The Violent Brutality of Growing Up in a Shame Honor Culture.” In shame honor cultures the female is objectified and scapegoated because she has no value; only when she gives birth to her first male child does she attain honor. However, should she not guard her honor she will be expendable and killed off. Hence all in these cultures grow up under a death threat. In many ways maturity is never achieved and neotenization occurs, a kind of developmental arrest. This too is an indicator that something must have gone very wrong in utero. Only honor can be redeemed by the male and only through spilling blood. In the western we too have pockets of “shame honor families,” highly patriarchal and abusive of the devalued female.

Areas of traumatic bonding for the young child zero to age three can be conceptualized concerning different attachment styles, traumatic experiences, deprivation, poor nutrition, paranoid family dynamics of shaming and humiliating, children treated as objects and not persons with their own specific psychological needs, the total lack of maternal attunement between mother and child and how this impacts on the neurobiology of a child’s brain development. Generally there is an absence of healthy play and creativity in highly controlled patriarchal environments because everyone is always already under surveillance in order to maintain alleged “honor” dependent upon inflicting abuse. This leaves the young child at a loss for being able to integrate three information processing systems vital to healthy development during these early years. The three systems are affects, cognition and language. It is very easy for a child to get derailed during this challenging time, most especially if the mother is flooded with trauma, anxiety and stress hormones.

What then would be areas of concern for prenatal traumatic bonding?

The womb is not always the fantasized utopia that the jihadis seek to return to. The fantasy of the virgins in the afterlife and the fusion with the mother through the return in death paint a telling sign of prenatal problems.

Prenatal research is being enriched through the sciences daily. With the use of technology such as ultrasound studies to cite only one and the development in understanding DNA, epigenetics etc., delving into the life of the fetus and the prenatal mother yields opportunities to learn what has gone well and its reverse. The narrative which will be created around such research may help to enlighten the nature of fetal bonding to mom. The prenatal life has been characterized by being impacted by stress hormones and anxiety which the mother experiences under her pervasive devaluation as a little girl years ago. The chronicity of shaming’s projection and violence would be an area of investigation to the fledgling development of a self. Drugs. alcohol, domestic violence, living under the death threat of being honor murdered, etc. would also play a role.  All of these contributing factors potentially impact on the brain development of the fetus.

Exploring the uncharted terrain of what traumatic bonding between mother and the fetus could hold clues to challenge the prevailing existing thoughts concerning the psychological make-up of the suicide bomber. This is a sketch presented as food for thought concerning the jihadi and his/her prenatal life. Having written elsewhere that nobody is born a jihadi per se and that early childhood matters, perhaps it is time to push back into the terrain of the prenatal in a more systematic way. The prenatal experience may very well be a kind of tipping point in the direction of a child at risk, a future jihadi who hates life and seeks death. Having to always be in a fused state the jihadi will always need to take out someone else i.e. the kufar infidel rather than die alone.

The brain and nervous system are affected by chronic abuse and the trauma bonding itself embodies and reflects the external violent environment of the culture, thus shaping the fetus. The adage that “hatred is bred in the milk of the mother” is nonetheless late developmentally, though not unimportant as it may continue to compound the postpartum attachment.

The concept of fetal programming “where the mother’s experience cycles through the development of the fetus” would seem to indicate that the abuse suffered as the chronically devalued female would stand to be communicated to the fetus, potentially compromising the stability of the maternal bond. Furthermore, traces of intergenerational transmission of trauma, trapped in a cycle of shame honor bondage, might also have a biochemical signature.  As mentioned above hormones, and hence neurotransmitters are part and parcel of the maternal fetal bonding process influencing the development of the brain.

Might it be possible then, to suggest the possibility for some kind of Jihadi Maternal Fetal Traumatic Bonding Disorder (JMFTBD) that tragically recycles over the course of life, particularly in the case of the jihadi. Time may tell. . .

BringThemHomeNOW!!