Aggression and Mysticism1

ONE OF THE CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES of current times is a resurgence of interest in mysticism and religious movements. This interest coincides with an upsurge of violence, which, while publicly condemned, is enjoined and vicariously enjoyed by a large proportion of law-abiding citizens. I propose that such a coincidence is not accidental; that those attracted to mystical movements are likely to be individuals who, sensitized by the violence around them, become preoccupied with their own potential for violence, which they find too threatening to express and are unable to neutralize within the available family and societal context. Followers of mystical movements wish to cancel the aggression of the world in order to do away with their own. In trying to account for mysticism as a chosen way of life, I am going to focus on the aggressive component of early object relations and their inner representations in the individual who chooses to become a mystic. This aggressive component or potential for violence may explain also why the search for a mystical experience, the acknowledged or implicit goal of the mystical endeavor, often fails.

Mystical movements that yearn for peace and love seem to appear in certain historical moments. Mysticism was probably endemic in India before its conquest by the warlike, Aryan-speaking people from Persia in the second millenium before Christ. But Indian mysticism grew stronger in the following centuries (Murphy and Murphy, 1968), as was the case in the Hellenistic world around the Mediterranean shores following the Roman conquest. Mystical movements that emphasized the wish for inner peace and unity developed within Christianity during the fourth century as a protest