Franks and Saracens

<p><i>Franks and Saracens</i> is the first and only book to examine the Crusades from the viewpoint of psychoanalysis studying the hidden emotions and fantasies that drove the Crusaders and the Muslims to undertake their terrible wars.</p><p>Using original documents as well as secondary sources Avner Falk demonstrates that the deepest and most powerful motives for the Crusades were not only religious or territorial – or the quest for lands wealth or titles – but also unconscious emotions and fantasies about one's country one's religion one's enemies God and the Devil Us and Them. The book demonstrates the collective inability to mourn large-group losses and the collective needs of large groups such as nations and religions to develop a clear identity to have boundaries and to have enemies and allies. Falk investigates the unconscious dynamics of the Crusades both on the individual and on the collective level to understand why the Crusading fantasies persisted for nearly two centuries and why the “northern Crusades” went on until the early fifteenth century. This updated edition adds a new chapter on collective trauma both as cause and as consequence of the Crusades and has been fully revised to include literature on trauma and other psychological aspects of the Crusades.</p><p><i>Franks and Saracens</i> will be of great interest to historians political scientists medievalists psychologists psychiatrists psychoanalysts anthropologists and sociologists interested in questions of conflict fantasy and identity collective psychological processes and to academics of the Crusades and military history.</p>