Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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In April 1976 Dr. Wolfgang de Boor met the four survivors of the
Stockholm embassy siege after the court authorities requested that he
examine them. He found them uncooperative, and his results thus depended
upon his interpretation of their gestures. Whenever they chose to speak,
which was seldom, it was aggressively. He did not find them
psychologically ill according to clinical standards, but he did think
they were not that different from schizophrenics, who, like the
terrorists, have their own standards of reality.8o
A 1981 study of left-wing West German terrorists found that six
percent of these (out of 227 individuals) had attempted suicide before
they entered the left 'scene I. Six percent of the 227 had also at one
time sought psychiatric or psychotherapeutic help. This was only one
percent above the five percent average of the general public who had
also sought similar help.81
Another study claims that the West German terrorists suffer from
psychological trauma that colours their perceptions in unreality, and
motivates them to commit terrorist acts. This conclusion is based on the
study of autobiographies and interviews with some of the apprehended
terrorists, court statements and the behaviour of terrorists. On the
other hand, it notes that many terrorists have enough links with reality
to evade police efforts to locate and arrest them. 82
III health could also affect psychological problems in individual
terrorists. Half of those included in the 1981 study suffered from ill
health, and one third were chronically or severely ill. This was the
result of life in the underground, accidents and head injuries, to which
could be added numerous hunger strikes (six between January 1973 and
January 1979). Their ill health resulted in poor coordination and the
frustration of not being able to match their idealised image of
themselves. This could be especially severe due to their active
requirements in the underground. 83
While this is not conclusive data, there are no ideal clinical
examinations, the exhaustive 1981 study found no psychological
ohne Verteidigung? (West Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1976), 89-100,
95.
8 a Wolfgang de Boor, "Terrorismus: Der 'Wahn I der Gesunden", in:
Hans-Dieter Schwind (ed.), Ursachen des Terrorismus in der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland (West Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1978), 122-
153, 122, 124, 128.
81 Lieselotte Suellwold, "Stationen in der Entwicklung von
Terroristen: Psychologische Aspekte biographischer Daten", in: Herbert
Jaeger, Gerhard Schmidtchen, Lieselotte Suellwold, Lorenz Boellinger
(eds.), Lebenslaufanalysen: Analysen zum Terrorismus 2 (Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981), 79-116, 101.
82 Kellen (1990), 43-4.
83 Suellwold, 102.