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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Why Religious Fundamentalism Is a Developmental Disorder

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Religious fundamentalism is often viewed as a matter of ideology, culture, or personal belief. However, there is a growing perspective—supported by developmental psychology and cognitive science—that fundamentalist thinking may reflect a kind of arrested development. Not in a clinical or pathologizing sense, but as a pattern of cognitive-emotional rigidity that halts or resists the complexification normally associated with psychological maturation. In this essay, I argue that religious fundamentalism functions as a developmental disorder insofar as it reflects a failure to advance beyond early stages of cognitive, moral, and ego development.

1. Cognitive Development and Literalism

Fundamentalism thrives on literal interpretations of sacred texts, often resisting metaphor, ambiguity, and historical context. This mode of thinking aligns with Jean Piaget's concrete operational stage (typically ages 7–11), where thinking is rule-bound, black-and-white, and focused on surface appearances rather than abstract reasoning.

In healthy cognitive development, individuals eventually reach the formal operational stage, capable of hypothetical, systemic, and relativistic thought. A mature religious orientation, then, would involve engaging with scriptures symbolically, understanding historical contingencies, and accepting pluralism. Fundamentalism, by contrast, clings to an earlier mode of cognition that cannot tolerate ambiguity or paradox.

2. Moral Development and Obedience to Authority

Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development provide another useful lens. At the pre-conventional and conventional levels, morality is largely defined by obedience to rules and social authority. Fundamentalists often emphasize divine law, absolute moral codes, and obedience to religious leaders or sacred texts.

Development into post-conventional morality—where individuals reason ethically based on universal principles and human welfare—requires the capacity to question authority and take responsibility for one's own values. Fundamentalist morality rarely makes this leap. It tends to treat doubt or moral complexity not as growth opportunities but as threats to divine order.

3. Ego Development and Identity Formation

From the perspective of ego development theories (e.g., Loevinger's stages), fundamentalism often corresponds with what Loevinger called the Conformist or Self-Protective stages. Here, identity is formed through adherence to external norms, and deviation is punished socially or psychologically.

Mature ego development involves increasing integration, self-reflection, and tolerance for difference. The Autonomous or Integrated ego can embrace paradox, multiple perspectives, and internal moral conflict. Fundamentalism, in contrast, provides a prematurely fixed identity that shields the ego from further development through mechanisms like dogma, taboo, and tribalism.

4. Psychosocial Needs and Regression Under Threat

Religious fundamentalism often arises in times of social instability, rapid change, or perceived cultural threat. Under such conditions, individuals and groups may regress to earlier stages of development, seeking certainty and cohesion. As psychologist Erik Erikson noted, unresolved crises at earlier psychosocial stages (such as trust vs. mistrust or identity vs. role confusion) can resurface later in life.

Fundamentalist belief systems often offer a surrogate resolution to these crises: a clear identity, a trustworthy cosmic order, and an unchanging moral code. But such solutions are rigid and externally imposed rather than internally integrated, making them developmental detours rather than true resolutions.

5. The Fear of Development Itself

Perhaps the most striking feature of fundamentalism is its resistance to development. Whether in thought, morality, or identity, it constructs systems designed to arrest growth. Faith becomes certainty, tradition becomes absolute, and doubt becomes sin.

This is not incidental. Development threatens the very foundation of fundamentalism: it introduces complexity, relativity, ambiguity, and personal responsibility. From a developmental perspective, fundamentalism may be understood as a system designed to protect the psyche from the challenges of growth—particularly the challenges of integrating conflicting truths, acknowledging historical contingency, or encountering cultural others.

6. Implications and Compassionate Engagement

Framing religious fundamentalism as a developmental disorder is not meant to demean believers or pathologize religion itself. Many religious traditions contain deep reservoirs of symbolic richness, ethical insight, and spiritual maturity. The issue is not religion per se, but a psychological orientation that refuses to grow.

If fundamentalism reflects developmental arrest, then the response cannot be merely intellectual debate or political opposition. It must also involve developmental support—education that fosters critical thinking, environments that tolerate ambiguity, and spiritual practices that emphasize inner growth over external conformity.

This framing invites compassion. Like any developmental disorder, fundamentalism is not simply a choice or a moral failing. It is a response to fear, uncertainty, and unmet psychological needs. To address it effectively, we must meet those needs without reinforcing the rigidity that prevents further growth.

7. The Paradox of Educated Fundamentalists: Compartmentalized Minds

One of the most puzzling features of modern religious fundamentalism is the presence of highly educated individuals—sometimes with PhDs in biology, physics, or engineering—who nevertheless hold rigid, literalist religious views. How can someone trained in the scientific method reject the overwhelming evidence for evolution, or believe in a young Earth? Doesn't advanced education imply advanced cognitive development?

The answer lies in the phenomenon of compartmentalization. Human cognition is not always globally integrated. It is entirely possible—indeed, common—for someone to operate with scientific rigor in their professional domain while maintaining a separate, insulated belief system for religious matters. These domains are walled off from each other psychologically, often by powerful social, emotional, or existential commitments.

In developmental terms, this suggests uneven development: formal operational thinking is present in some domains but suppressed in others. The scientific self and the religious self may coexist without meaningful dialogue. The religious compartment often remains locked at a more concrete, absolutist stage, protected from critical scrutiny by cognitive dissonance management, identity fusion, or appeals to divine authority over human reason.

For example, a molecular biologist who publishes in peer-reviewed journals might, in a church setting, advocate for Intelligent Design or flood geology. In such cases, scientific reasoning is not applied to core religious narratives because doing so would threaten not just ideas, but identity, community, and spiritual security. In fact, the religious self may see the questioning of doctrine as morally or spiritually dangerous, reinforcing the partitioning of mental life.

This paradox highlights the fact that intelligence and development are not the same. One can be highly intelligent in solving technical problems and still operate from a developmentally earlier structure of meaning when it comes to worldview questions. Development involves not just the accumulation of knowledge, but the integration of perspectives, the tolerance of ambiguity, and the ability to revise core beliefs in light of new evidence. These are precisely the capacities that fundamentalist systems are designed to resist.

Conclusion

Religious fundamentalism is not just an ideology; it is a psychological posture that resists development. It reflects an attempt to halt the natural evolution of thought, morality, and selfhood in favor of a stable but simplistic worldview. As such, it can be understood as a developmental disorder—not in a clinical or derogatory sense, but in the precise sense that it impedes the unfolding of human potential. Recognizing this may help us to move beyond confrontation toward a more nuanced and developmental approach to religious conflict and transformation.