One of the most significant contributions of my theoretical approach, Separation Theory, is that it offers an understanding of the core dynamics underlying human aggression. It explains how people’s defensive nature and dependency on fantasy bonds polarize them against others with different customs and beliefs. In a similar vein, Schneider’s (2013) concept of “psychological polarization” describes the elevation of one absolutist point of view to the exclusion, even demonization, of all others (The Polarized Mind). Such polarization is the age-old antidote to the existential anxiety and panic evoked by the painful realization of the inevitability of one’s personal mortality.

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