Psychology of Terrorism - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

academic fields of study.-Terrorism literature took off in the same year as international terrorism itself, 1968, and theaccumulated output is by now vast.-A focused survey of the scholarly output during three decades of terrorism studies indicates that thetheoretical inadequacies are longstanding and the hermeneutic of crisis management is deeplyentrenched.-Theorizing about terrorism has always been problematic as a consequence of the diverse nature ofthe groups and individuals that are categorized as "terrorist."-Models based on psychological concerns typically hold that “terrorist” violence is not so much apolitical instrument as an end in itself; it is not contingent on rational agency but is the result ofcompulsion or psychopathology. Over the years scholars of this persuasion have suggested that“terrorists” do what they do because of (variously and among other things) self destructive urges,fantasies of cleanliness, disturbed emotions combined with problems with authority and the self, andinconsistent mothering.-According to another prolific interpretative model, terrorism is based on power orientedinstrumentalism, or "strategic choice theory."-If it seeks to attribute a certain set of abnormalities to the "terrorist mind," it lacks empiricalevidence and one must concur with Konrad Kellen in concluding that such interpretations ofterrorism, "may or may not be accurate[in particular cases, but] lack general applicability."-Terrorism studies has remained profoundly distant from its research subject. The lack of interactionwith actual "terrorists" is evidenced by the literature, and not talking to terrorists seems to havebecome established as a source of scholarly credibility.-Instead, the field has increasingly come to rely on secondary sources.-How is it possible to make psychoanalytical pronouncements about individuals one has never hadcontact with?-Schmid and Jongman lucidly but damningly sum up the early years of terrorism research in a 1988stock taking of the field: There are probably few areas in the social science literature in which somuch is written on the basis of so little research. Perhaps as much as 80 percent of the literature isnot research based in any rigorous sense....-Two recent works that understand the importance of primary encounters and make use of them areJessica Stern’s The Ultimate Terrorists and Jonathan Tucker’s (ed.) Toxic Terror.-From within its own intellectual metastructure, the terrorism studies community has created aprofoundly adversarial relationship with its research subject. This seems to stem partly from thenotion that scholars are obliged to defend liberal democratic society and, thus, to combat terrorism.-As each scholar or institution makes their definitional bid, what they are offering is nothing morethan a formal statement on who, in their opinion, should be thought of as a terrorist. The debate hasgone no where precisely because defining terrorism is an exercise in political classification.-When the rationale of the research becomes understanding the threat rather than understanding asocial phenomenon, this influences the manner in which the subject is approached, affects the resultsof the research and thus impinges upon the scope of understanding and knowledge.-Related to the adversarial relationship with there search subject and the close relationship withgovernment agencies, is the bias developed through reliance on secondary source material evenwhere primary sources are available.-There is one fundamental issue relevant to such understanding that is rarely mentioned in terrorismstudies and yet the virtual absence of which is an unambiguous sign of the flawed methodologycurrently in vogue.-At the most general level "culture" refers to the totality of the impact that human beings make uponthe natural environment. In this context, however, we are interested in the immaterial or socialdimensions of culture, that is, the unique collection of social roles, institutions, values, ideas, andsymbols operative in every group, which radically conditions the way in which its members see theworld and respond to its challenge.-In every human culture there are sets of behaviors( often quite specific to that culture) that are fairlypredictable and regular and that are capable of being presented in generalized and typical patterns,even though the unpredictability endemic to human affairs means that they do not acquire the statusof social law.-In recent years there has been a great deal of research done to develop a taxonomy of national