What the majority of people know about terrorism is the result of its action: the dead and wounded lying in the streets, policemen and firemen running around, sirens wailing, screaming, weeping, panic and despair. But what is a terrorist? What comes through his mind when he plans and executes his acts? How someone is capable of such a hate that he is ready to massacre so many innocent people, and die in the process, turning his body into a guided missile? Our first and most instinctive answer is that they are insane. However, experts in the analysis of terrorists do not agree. They have evidences that terrorists come mostly from common people like you and me. Many actually are idealists, moralists and quite sociable. Dr. Jarrold Post, from the George Washington University, and a former head of a Central Intelligence Agency's center for analysis of personality and political behavior in terrorism, thinks that the main reason for someone willing to join a terrorist group is of a social nature. As it happens with all human beings, they need to belong to a group which approves them, and to find their place inside it. Generally, they are young men who have lost relatives or friends to political, ethnical or religious violence or wars, are unemployed or feeling helpless and without a way out. The terrorist's mission now becomes a new and valuable objective in their lives, as set by his new social group. By following this new way, they find renewed sense for their life and they feel self-important and committed. What these groups have in common? A strong cause and the ideal to reach it at any cost. Historically, terrorism has been carried out in the name of many ideals. The origin of the term is the Reign of Terror instituted by French revolutionaries in the 18th century as a form of government. In the 19th century and early 20th century, for example, anarchy, nihilism and extreme nationalism were the fuels of political assassination and bombing, such as the infamous assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Bosnia by extremist Gavrilo Princip, which started the First World War. Anarchy and nihilism were political movements which denied the very existence of government and authority as such (nihil = nothing, in Latin), therefore they had no other reason to kill and main innocent people other than the elimination of government. Terrorism has also been used by politically extremist groups broth from the left and from the right, as well as by nationalistic and separatist groups, such as in Sri Lanka, Palestine and Northern Ireland always existed and continue to this very day, with all its horrors. The "new" causes for terrorism in the present century include radical religious groups and sects, such as the Japanese sarin gas attack in Tokyo in 1997, and Hezbollah, or the Islamic Jihad, which are inspired by a clash of Islamic fundamentalism against the values of West civilization. Racism and ideology have always been important drivers of terrorist groups, too, such as the Klu-Klux-Klan and Arians, in the USA, or radical communists, such as the Sendero Luminoso, in Peru, are horrible examples that come to our mind. Finally, there are terrorist groups and individuals who seem to be moved exclusively by the thirst for vengeance, such as the Armenian Genocide Revenge Group. In the mind of the terrorist it is very important to have a clearly defined enemy. Dr. Post argues that the psychology of terrorists is very polarized. "It is a dualist psychology. It is we against them, the good ones against the bad ones", he says. The terrorist's group is always the good one, the rest of the world is the bad one. There is no intermediate zone in the terrorist's mind. If you are not totally for us you are against us. This clearly defined enemy can be a government, a nation, an ethnic group, or even an entire system of ideals, such as a civlization. Politically and economically dominant countries, or former imperial and colonial powers, such as the USA and Great Britain, respectively, are often the target of terrorist group's hatred and organized campaigns. The terrorist's hate: normal or pathological? An important question is whether the motivation that transforms the terrorist into a killing machine is of a psychopathological or neuropathological nature (an anomaly in the brain). Is it possible that terrorists have an intrinsic anti-social personality, or, in other words, do they need to be psychopaths in order to do what they do without any moral inhibition or feeling of remorse? Is it possible also that they develop a kind of collective paranoid behavior (delusions to be persecuted and discriminated)? M. Gottschalk, a psychologist, carried out one of the few studies published about this. He used a questionnaire to evaluate a series of attitudes and psychological dispositions of 90 Israeli and Palestinian terrorists, and compared them with non terrorists. Results were alarming because they indicated that the majority of terrorists seemed to present elevated scores on psychosis, paranoia, hypomania (loss of feelings) and depression. Emotional distortions, irrational thoughts and pathological hatred were also very common amon his subjects. According to the distinguished psychiatric diagnostic manual DSM-IV, the disturbances of paranoid personality are characterized by a pattern of mistrust and suspicion in such a way that motives are almost always interpreted as malevolent. Included in this pattern there are, for example, a tendency to persistently hold grudge, to mistrust strangers and outsiders and to distort experiences because they erroneously interpret neutral and friendly action of others as being hostile. There is also an excessive emotional sensitivity to rejection and setbacks. On the other hand, persons with an anti-social personality syndrome present an egotistical pattern of disregard for and consistent violation of the right of others. They are indifferent to the feelings and suffering of fellow humans, and show disrespect for norms, rules and social obligations. After performing anti-social acts, the sociopath shows no remorse or feelings of guilt. As far as we know, therefore, individuals who are good candidates to become terrorists display this set of mental dispositions. However, a doubt comes quickly to our mind: are these psychopathological characteristics intrinsic to all terrorists or are the result of training or indoctrination by the group? The profile of the fanatic terrorist seems to be much more complex than that, because, although there are many instances of terrorists who act alone, the norm is that they belong to an usually small group with the same feelings, thoughts and attitudes regarding ideology, race, religion, etc. In order to be accepted by the group, the members must change and adopt without restriction the group's credo and rationale. One of the most fundamental factors that lead to this is the extreme social isolation of the group and its members in relation to the rest of society, thus causing a progressive disconnection with reality. Indoctrination and brain washing techniques which are employed by the group may induce pathological thinking. This seems to be a phenomenon very similar to the so-called "Shared Psychotic Disorder" (3) also called "follie a deux" (couple madness, in French). It has been proved that shared suicide delusions, shared paranoia, shared psychological hatred, etc. can occur in relatively large groups of people who live in tight emotional proximity and in social isolation for a long time. This, in fact, seems to be one of the main features of terrorist training programs. Generally the dominant person (the leader) has paranoid and other delusions and induce them into his trainees in a chronic way. The leader tactics is first to provoke total subservience in the group in order to facilitate the induction of deviant thoughts and emotions. Success is measured by the total surrender of the terrorist trainee's mind to the leaders. It is astounding to see how many young people fall under these methods of cold and calculated manipulation of their minds. Paranoid alterations, which are commonly seen in schizophrenic individuals as well as the anti-social personality we see in psychopaths, seem to be related to serious brain alterations, mainly in the prefrontal cortex and in the limbic system. The prefrontal cortex is responsible by the orientation and contextualization of emotion and social behavior of the individual while the limbic system is responsible for the emotional memories and for the commands of emotional expressions working jointly with other areas of the brain. However, we do not know if these areas really are anatomically of functionally altered in the brain of a terrorist. Conclusions The observed features of the terrorist attack of September 11th bear the distinctive marks of a faith-based initiative, tempered with hate and vengeance, because it involved a suicide pact of all terrorists involved in the abduction and subsequent crash of airplanes against civilian targets. What causes the most worry nowadays is the suicidal terrorist, who is willing to die for his cause. This is one of the reasons, by the way, why retaliation with war and more deaths will not work. What is the use of killing those who precisely wish to die? We must eliminate the cause of so much hatred, and not fuel more and more the spiral of violence and terror. There will always be fanatics willing to die in order to revenge. Rationalization is a powerful tool of the human mind. This means that we can justify almost anything we wish to do, if we use a flawed logic or non-rational arguments, such as those who hide the complete truth. Adolf Hitler, the supreme terrorist of the 20th century, summarized this very well, when he said that "the aims justify the means". He did this to "save" the German people and to promote holocaust. This is what is most scaring about the human mind. I see clearly that
one of the main keys to deter the threat of never-ending vengeance and
counter-vengeance consists in understanding better the terrorist's mind
and his motives, and to do something to interrupt the apparently inexhorable
chain that leads him to the killing fields. Terrorism will always
exist, but there must be a way to contain it to levels which do not interfere
with freedom and peace amont the people.
References 1. Gottschalk, M.
- The
terrorist's mind: A psychological profile
To Know More Sabbatini, R.M.E.
- A Mente de um Terrorista. Correio Popular, 14.Sept.2001 (in Portuguese)
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