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This article puts forward hypotheses that follow on from the lines of thought expounded in my book L’actuel malaise dans la culture: the split between a civilized trend and aggressiveness against culture nourishes a disavowal of the destructiveness at work in collective psychology and even in critical thought – so that judgement remains in abeyance. The superego is weakened, then perverted and split. Individuals set it against the legitimacy of authority and laws. Sadistic and paranoiac destructiveness may get the upper hand as in jihadist terrorism, which is at once internal and external to our discontents in civilization. Radical Islamism constitutes a typical form of the perverted superego much more than it results from fragile narcissistic identities.