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Professor Lamy presents a lively, well-researched, and evocative book that will be of particular value to psychoanalysts who have interest in the applied psychoanalysis of large groups, religion, cults, and interaction of charismatic religious ideas and societal political processes. An initial reading of this book will be refreshing for psychoanalysts who find dense psychoanalytic j argon confining. Actually, profound psychoanalytic ideas do not require jargon for their expression. This point is illustrated, for example, by the elegant work and writing of Hilde Bruch and Robert Stollar. There is no psychoanalytic jargon in Lamy's book. A second reading reveals why—unfortunately, the author applied no psychoanalytic ideas to his subject! I will attempt to offer some examples of such possible collaborations later in my discussion.
Lamy gets quickly to an encompassing definition and the relentless theme of his book:
Apocalyptic beliefs are rooted in ancient Jewish and Christian literature concerning the destiny of the world and the cosmic cataclysm in which GOD destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom that will last for 1,000 years—the prophesied millennium. The apocalyptic belief—or millennial myth as I refer to it throughout this book—I teaches that we are living at the end of human history. (p. 3)
In his first chapter, Lamy lays a dense foundation for his concepts of “millennial rage” using a journalistic style. He provides a good description of “survivalism” and a nice summary of the factors accounting for the resurgence of millennial activity in the U.S. as the end of the millennium approaches: (1) rapid social change here and abroad; (2) the relative economic decline of the U.S.; (3) the end of an era of Soviet communism; (4) a perceived end of the American era; and (5) the literal end of the twentieth century. Although he describes many angry men among survivalists, militias, unabombers, bombers, and cult leaders, h