Franks and Saracens

A Psychoanalytic Study of the Crusades

Avner Falk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781040228913
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Franks and Saracens 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.

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.

Franks and Saracens 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1. Us and Them
• 2. Romans, Franks, and Germans
• 3. Myths of Origin
• 4. The Cross and the Crusades
• 5. The Fantasy of the Holy Roman Empire
• 6. A Short History of the “Saracens”
• 7. The First Crusade: Acting Out Rescue Fantasies
• 8. The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem as a Psychogeographical Fantasy
• 9. The Second Crusade: Persisting Rescue Fantasies
• 10. Templars and Hospitallers: Monastic Knights?
• 11. The “Saracens” Look at the “Franks”
• 12. The Third Crusade: A Lionheart in Search of a Holy Land?
• 13. The Fourth Crusade: “Latin” Christians Kill “Greek” Christians
• 14. The Fifth Crusade: An Invasion of Egypt that Predictably Fails
• 15. The Sixth Crusade: Winning Jerusalem Peacefully
• 16. The Seventh Crusade: The Unhappy War of “Saint Louis”
• 17. The Eighth Crusade: The Tragic Death of “Saint Louis”
• 18. The Ninth Crusade: The End of a Two-Century Fantasy
• 19. Trauma in the Crusades
• 20. Aftermath: The End of a Two-Century Fantasy
• Epilogue: “The New Crusaders”
• Bibliography
• Index