Psychology of Terrorism - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

focuses on the depressive characteristic in the terrorist personality. According to Konrad Kellen, thisexplanation reveals a terrorist who “often is a person who feels empty, anhedonic and …as a child hemay have suffered from the triad of enuresis fire setting cruelty to animals” (Kellen, 1979, p.2).-With regards to Cooper’s assertion that the death wish is part of the sociopathic personalities ofpolitical terrorists, other observers disagree.-The hypothesis that terrorists are motivated by a death-wish thus remain unsubstantiated.-The mental disorder perspective of political terrorism clearly suffers from the absence of clinicalobservations reported in a manner that compares or allows them to be compared to a generalpopulation sample. Additionally, there is little of the cross-cultural and cross-national datanecessary to examine the relative importance of culture and personality.-Physiological Impairments and Mental Disorders:-E. Patrick McGuire reported that Hubbard andanother psychiatrist, F. Gentry Harris, examined 80 imprisoned terrorist in 11 countries and foundthat 90% of them had defective vestibular functions in the middle ear.-What he suggest, rather is that certain personas who engage in terrorism for strictly personal ornonpolitical reason suffer from personality disorder characteristics. These persons are identified byHubbard as soloists. They act alone and appear virtually incapable of undertaking the groupbehavior required by political terrorists.-Hubbard identifies two other types of terrorist types, the conspirator and the groupist . These twotypes appear more likely to engage in political terrorism. The conspirator also is exhibitionistic, butis motivated primarily by the fear of unresolved grief. The groupist in contrast, usually avoidspublic identification and willing surrenders his individual ego needs to the interests of the group.-What remains confusing in Hubbard’s work is the physiological factors that he hints are related toterrorists: “I suspect it will be possible to determine specific chemical distinctions among andbetween soloist, conspirators and Groupists during moments of their actions” (Hubbard, 1978,P.191).-As long a Hubbard is unwilling to provide detailed descriptions of his data and analysis procedures,the assertion that inner ear impairments tend to produce renegade or antisocial behavior such asterrorism appears to be conjecture.-Rational-Idealist Perspective: -No theorist from this perspective views every political terrorist as arational idealist.-Irving Goldaber (1979) divides them into idealistic protestors, ideological zealots, and terroristextremists.-Paul Wilkinson is a leading proponent of the rational idealist perspective who nevertheless believesthat many Western terrorist are criminals or criminally insane.-J. Bowyer-Bell’s view of political terrorism is more typical of the rational idealist perspective, sincehe rejects the importance of both pathology and liberal democratic interpretations of revolutionarypolitical terrorist such as the Japanese Red Army.-Professor Wilfried Rasch of the Institute of Forensic Psychiatry of the Free University of Berlinexamined leaders of the Baader-Meinhof Group another West German terrorist and concluded thatwith one exception “nothing was found which could justify their classification as psychotics,neurotics, fanatics or psychopaths. None of the men and women I saw could have been diagnosed as“paranoid.” This applies particularly to the four main defendants who died in the Stuttgart prison:Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, and Raspr” (Rasch, 1979, p.80)50. Cota-McKinley, A., Woody, W., & Bell P. (2001). Vengeance: Effects of gender age religious background.Aggressive Behavior, 27, 343-350.Call Number: Editor's Annotation: Authors Abstract: Vengeance can be commonly defined as theinfliction of harm in return for perceived injury or insult or as simply getting back at another person.Three hundred fifty-three participants responded to eight hypothetical scenarios that may elicitvengeful behavior in which the offending party was either a romantic partner, a friend, a coworker,or a stranger. Participants also completed a vengeance scale and a measure of biblical literalism.Participants were most vengeful toward coworkers and least vengeful toward romantic partners.Age, religious conservatism, and gender were significant predictors of attitudes toward vengeance.Although men were more likely than women to be accepting of vengeful attitudes as measured bythe vengeance scale, only age was a significant predictor of behavior in the vengeance scenarios.The current research provides a basis for a systematic investigation of vengeance within the structure