Fundamentalism & Mental Illness

"Since World War II, only the fundamentalist portion of the religious spectrum has grown, precisely because of the general ambiguity into which our age has fallen. What might be embraced as the greatest freedom to choose in human history instead stirs anxiety in many. Fundamentalism, be it religious or political or psychological is an anxiety management technique that finesses the nuances of doubt and ambiguity through rigid and simplistic belief systems. If I can persuade myself that the world is perpetually founded on the values of another, culturally limited, less conscious age, then I do not have to address the new subtleties of moral choice, the emergent capacities of women, the ambiguities of gender, sexual identity, and preference, and the horrors of nationalism, factionalism, and other tribal mentalities.
Of course people have a right to affirm any set of values that they have sincerely, experientially tested, but fundamentalism is a form of mental illness that seeks to repress anxiety, ambiguity, and ambivalence. The more mature the personality structure, the greater the capacity of the person, and the culture, to tolerate the anxiety, ambiguity, and ambivalence that are a necessary and unavoidable dimension of our lives. A culture that is immature, and believes its values besieged, will fall back into a siege mentality, a sentimental nostalgia for a simpler time, for simplistic black-and-white value judgments, and will project its own shadow by vilifying others.
The world is not black and white."
James Hollis, in Finding Meaning In The Second Half of Life
"Much of what I would call fundamentalism is really an anxiety disorder—which they try to solve by black-and-white thinking and projecting onto others. It's very unconscious, and it's very poor ego development. You can see how important it is for the ego to be strong enough to tolerate those tensions. When I can't tolerate them, I'll dump them on you. That's all projection. And projection is that which the ego is just not dealing with."
Was ist "das Ich"? An interview with James Hollis on Carl Jung by Amy Edelstein