51

In 2014, approximately one thousand of our young citizens voluntarily left for Syria in order to fight in the name of God. They had been challenged by propaganda that used mass Internet broadcast of so-called religious sermons interspersed with videos exhibiting horrendous murders. There is no question of our searching for psychiatric excuses to temper the responsibility for such terrorist acts. However, with psychoanalysis, we can nevertheless question what may have incited these youths of both genders to surrender to these brutal, often unexpected, breaks from their social, educational, or religious backgrounds as well as to these sudden outbursts of a murderous violence that was only underpinned by simplistic ideals. Based on a clinical example and a collection of accounts, I shall question the deadly force at play in modern terrorism, referring, notably, to Freud and his theory on the pathologies of the ideal when it is put to the service of the death drive.