Psychological Aspects of Terrorism Archives

The Changing Nature of State Sponsorship of Terrorism

February 13, 2019August 8, 2017 by admin

The U.S. approach toward state sponsorship of terrorism rests on a flawed understanding of the problem and an even more flawed policy response. The U.S. Department of State’s current formal list of state sponsors includes Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. But Cuba and North Korea have done almost nothing in this area in recent years, and Sudan has changed its ways enough that elsewhere the Bush administration credits Sudan as a “strong partner in the War on Terror.” Of those on the list, only Syria and Iran remain problems, and in both cases their involvement in traditional international terrorism is down considerably from their peaks in the 1980s. What seems like a brilliant policy success, however, is really an artifact of bad list management, because much of the problem of state sponsorship today involves countries that are not on the list at all. Pakistan has long aided a range of terrorist groups fighting against India in Kashmir and

Psychological Aspects of Terrorism

February 5, 2019June 22, 2017 by admin

It used to be fairly common, but now hardly a day goes by without someone asking “You’re a psychiatrist—so tell me, what makes people become terrorists?” or “What’s wrong with those people?” My answer in this month’s column is the same as it has always been. First, there are many different kinds of terrorism and terror-violence (a term coined, or at least popularized, by Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni of Loyola School of Law, Chicago). The “answer,” to the extent that anyone knows it, varies from type to type and event to event. Second, although everyone has a personality, and personality is important in behavior, the idea that there are archetypal terrorist personalities, or mental illnesses that predispose one to what most people call terrorism, is simply a myth. For these reasons, this month’s column may not sound very psychiatric at times. I will talk more about what terrorism is not (vis-à-vis psychiatry and psychology) than what it is, in an effort to help readers...