A mass murder of journalists will serve as a starting point for an analysis of fanaticism, its sources and its social context in a modern Europe that is heir to the Enlightenment. We will try to show how the movement of institutionalized loyalty from the state to religion is based on the principles of humanism. We will discuss the notion of the development of a sense of morality in the child using observations of psychoanalysis and evoke the links between style and psychic position in regard to paranoia.

Adolescence, 2015, 33, 3, 613-639.