Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Fundamentalism, Radicalisation and Terrorism

Jessica Yakeley, Paul Cundy, Jessica Yakeley, Paul Cundy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367582395
• eBook ISBN: 9780429670732
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Terrorism is no longer woven into the backdrop of our daily lives, but rather it has been pushed to centre stage – an ongoing tragedy in which comprehension of the perpetrators' motivations is eclipsed by the impact of horror and devastation on its victims and wider society. Attempting to make sense of these atrocities and their antecedents, a body of literature has accumulated since 9/11 which offers a psychoanalytic perspective on terrorism. This research provides a reflective space within which the unconscious motivations, primitive conflicts, fantasies and impulses that underpin the extreme mindsets and violent actions of the individuals and groups involved may be explored, offering insights complementary to those of different disciplines – sociological, political, cultural and other.

This book brings together contemporary psychoanalytic writers and practitioners involved in the study of radicalisation, fundamentalism and terrorism. Some of the authors have worked with terrorists, thus grounding their reflections and insights in direct clinical contact with these individuals. Understanding the motivations of the perpetrators includes elucidation of the wider group dynamics of minority populations, where the perpetuation of violence that is seen as terrorism may be viewed by its perpetrators as a justifiable response to collective experiences of subjugation, humiliation and injustice suffered over generations. Understanding such perspectives is not colluding with the aggressors, but rather it may contribute to interventions at both individual and global levels that attempt to break the deadly cycle of violence.

This book was originally published as two special issues of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist: a selected overview of the psychoanalytic and group analytic study of terrorism

Pamela Kleinot

This paper is an attempt to understand the significant increase in terrorism worldwide following the 9/11 Al-Quaida bombings which triggered the Bush Administration’s “war on terror”, leading to two wars and ultimately to the emergence of Daesh. I explore the motivation for social violence as terrorism, which can be carried out by the state or by its citizens, and look at how one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. The paper looks at why seemingly ordinary people are converted into ‘homegrown’ jihadists and how alienation and shame are the driving forces of violence. I give a selected overview of psychoanalytical ideas that try to make sense of the unconscious roots of aggression, hatred and violence. As terrorism is a social activity group analysis has an important contribution to make in understanding the violence of large groupings. The media has a crucial role to play as sensationalist coverage of violence provides terrorists with a free media platform. Both the media and terrorists need an audience and feed off each other. This paper will explore these themes.

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America (after 9/11) … But black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years – Maya Angelou (Guardian, 2014)

Poverty is the worst form of violence – Mahatma Gandhi

Terrorism has increased significantly worldwide following the Al-Quaida 9/11 bombings in the US in 2001, which triggered the Bush Administration’s ‘war on terror’. The US and Britain invaded Afghanistan later that year and the UK again joined the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Daesh, commonly known as ISIS, surfaced in 2004. London was hit by the 7/7 bombings in 2005. There has been a wave of terrorist attacks throughout Europe, the US, the Middle East, Africa, Indonesia and other parts of the world ever since.

Terrorism, sometimes described as the poor man’s atom bomb, is derived from the Latin word Terrere which means to terrify, frighten and startle. The common explanation for the escalation of terrorist incidents is the rise in fundamentalist Islam. Although the emergence of Daesh has been attributed directly to the invasion of Iraq, this development has been fuelled by military interventions in the Middle East coupled with increasing poverty and inequality between rich and poor countries. Billions spent on the wars in the Middle East has not curbed terrorism. In fact, it has led to more violence and intensified an ‘us and them mentality’ as well as increased polarisation between Muslims and non-Muslims. Daesh uses social media to radicalise, recruit and raise funds. The films of executions and other atrocities are shocking. Most people are disgusted and frightened by the beheadings accompanied by a smiling and proud murderer justifying the action. Yet, others are inspired by these images. The impact is intensified when the perpetrators are revealed as converts to Daesh who have grown up in Western countries.

The word terrorist is used indiscriminately as a synonym for rebel, insurgent, freedom fighter or revolutionary. Are the terms interchangeable? After all, one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. Is the motivation for the one the same as for the other? Blackwell (2012) has taken pains to stress that when people are blocked from full access to political institutions, and/or when such institutions are systemically biased against them, terrorism must be seen as a form of legitimate political action. Blackwell refers to Sartre (1961) who says in the preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth that when the oppressed resort to violence, it should be recognised that the initial violence is to be found in the system of oppression.

Although terrorist acts can be a means to an end, they can be an end in themselves. Alderdice (2002) distinguishes ordinary crime from terrorism: ‘Terrorism is not a belief system but a tactic (involving) the pre-mediated use of violence to create a climate of fear, but is aimed at a wider target than the immediate victims of violence (p. 11).’

The story of Nelson Mandela puts into context that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Mandela, who spent 27 years in jail for his terrorist activities, is testimony to how his fight for freedom won the day. He became one of the most venerated world leaders. Of course South Africa was ruled by terror and met with resistance, but ultimately it was through international sanctions and negotiations that the country was able to hold its first democratic multi-racial elections in 1994.

The complexity of terrorist vs freedom fighter is highlighted by De Zulueta (2006) who argues that Osama Bin Laden and 50,000 fighters worldwide were recruited and trained by Pakistan and the US (who also funded the operation, as did the UK and Saudi Arabia).

These men were feted as ‘freedom fighters’ in the White House and Downing Street in 1989 (and it may well be that we owe the final collapse of the Soviet Union partly to Bin Laden and his followers). Similarly, the Taliban were trained by Pakistan with the backing of the US and the UK (p. 14).

How are seemingly ordinary people converted into ‘homegrown’ jihadists? ‘Radicalisation’ is the term often used to describe the conversion of young people to terrorism, although traditionally the word radical is used in a less pejorative political sense. One factor in their conversion is that many have grown up in the ‘war on terror generation’ and resent the negative portrayal of Muslims in the barrage of Islamophobia. Horrific images of them are transmitted into smartphones and social media feeds. Another factor is increasing social and economic inequality and racism, which fuels feelings of exclusion, alienation and other grievances.

At this time of heightened global insecurity and fear of terrorism, considerable intellectual and research activity is underway to try to make sense of it all. This involves many fields of study including sociology and social psychology, history, economics and religion. Psychoanalysis has always focused on the causes and consequences of violence and aggression. However, terrorism is a social activity. What goes on in the mind of the terrorist always occurs in a social context. Therefore, group analysis, with its roots in both psychoanalysis and sociology, has an important contribution to make.

How can psychoanalysis and group analysis help us understand this?

Psychoanalysts have argued that unconsciously hate is just as basic to our instinctual make-up as its opposite, love. In Terrorism and War: Unconscious Dynamics of Political Violence, Arundale (2002) comments that Freud’s (1920) idea of the ‘death instinct’ was taken further by Klein’s hypothesis that it is the source of envy, which requires deflection outwards because it is so threatening (Klein, 1946/1975 ). This, in turn, makes the individual fearful of attacks by others. However, Arundale notes that this view has been challenged by many psychoanalysts, such as Kohut (1972), who linked the origins of hatred to the universal ‘narcisstic wound’, and Fairbairn (1952), who held that in the context of relationships frustration fosters hatred.

Several concepts from the work of Freud are helpful in understanding terrorism. These include the repetition compulsion (Freud, 1920) through which a previous situation is re-enacted in an unconscious attempt to master the anxieties associated with it, and annihilation anxiety concerning survival, self-preservation and safety. Using ideas from contemporary psychoanalysis, Meloy and Yakeley (2014) refer to Fonagy’s proposition that membership of the large group activates the attachment system, a psychological process which offers the individual a sense of belonging and safety. However, when group participation is troubled, the dynamics of broken and disrupted attachments prevail. Many psychoanalytical ideas about trauma and violence are relevant to the study of terrorism, especially in connection with individual and group identity. Kleinot (2011) has shown that behind every act of violence, there is the pain of trauma, loss, helplessness and rage. De Zulueta (1993) has argued that the cause of violence is ‘attachment gone wrong’ – that trauma breeds violence breeds trauma breeds violence, especially when traumatised people are unable to narrate their experiences to other people who can understand their communications. Terrorism is potentially a meaningful communication that must be understood in the context of the more general state of mind in which the capacity to think, symbolise and reflect is absent.

Looking at the terrorist-prone individual, Akhtar (2002) quoting Volkan (1997) writes that most major players in a terrorist organisation are, themselves, deeply traumatised individuals. As children they suffered chronic physical abuse and profound emotional humiliation. Quoting Sandler (1987), he argues that the ‘safety feeling’, necessary for healthy psychic growth, was violated. Trevmow and Sacco (2002, p.107) quote Volkan (1999) that a familiar enemy helps contain and hold disavowed self- and object representations. Akhtar (2002) argues that the terrorist leader appeals to group members’ infantile hunger for love and acceptance and offers potential recruits what is in effect a new family, putting himself in the role of the good father. He emphasises that a terrorist-prone individual is pushed over the edge by a trigger from the environment. This may be a new trauma to oneself or family or ethnic group, experienced as an injustice or insult to personal and/or group honour. ‘Feeling itself to be a victim, the group begins to victimise others in an act of externalisation (p. 91).’

Volkan (1988) highlights the importance of studying large group identity in shaping the terrorist’s core individual identity. He argues that large group identity emerges through shared mental representations of the large group history. These include historical traumas and triumphs involving collective pride and shame. These have been unconsciously chosen and ritualised by the group in the service of group cohesion, helping differentiate the group from the enemy.

The dynamics of large groups foster regression among its members from higher mental functioning to more primitive mental states. To describe the turbulent feelings of a large group under threat, Volkan uses the metaphor of the tent. The canvas of a tent, which is loose-fitting, allows a huge number of individuals to share a sense of sameness with others who are in the same tent. When the tent is perceived to be under threat, group identity is shaken, which often leads to violent revenge for a perceived injustice.

Group analysis helps explain these processes, particularly the endless transgenerational cycle of violence, retaliation and revenge associated with terrorist activities. Foulkes stressed ‘man’s social nature as basic’ (Foulkes, 1964/1984. p. 108). A key tenet of group analysis is that communication is used to keep people talking, not fighting and killing each other. Individuals are nodal points in a communication network. Health is defined in terms of the ‘free flow of communication and ill-health in terms of a blockage in it’ which Foulkes referred to as an ‘autistic symptom … it mumbles to itself secretly, hoping to be overheard’ (Foulkes & Anthony, 1957/1984, p. 259). In group analytic terms, a group of 8–15 people is likely to recapitulate the dynamics of the family; 16–32 people to recapitulate groupings such as a classroom; and more than 32 reflects society.

Nitsun’s (1991) concept of ‘anti-group’, which describes the destructive aspect of groups, is helpful in understanding terrorism. He views terrorism as one group projecting its envy, hatred and sadistic fantasies onto another group with the aim of annihilation (personal communication, 2017). In The Anti-Group (1996), Nitsun’s emphasis on the destructive threat in groups is based on primitive systems of intragroup defence. Reflecting on emotional disturbance originating in the early mother–child relationship, he argues that severe distress in later life often generates a wish to restore the primacy of the one-to-one relationship based on an idealised fantasy of total fusion in the context of a perfectly containing relationship. This is often needed to compensate for profound early disappointment in emotional development, with consequent rage and emptiness. A similar social process creates the notion of an idealised group in which there is total fusion and total containment but this entails a splitting process in which another group – ‘the enemy’ – is not just denigrated but seen as harbouring destructive intent.

In terrorist activity, the enemy group is imbued with attributions of great danger, so that annihilation is the only satisfactory solution. This, in turn, enables the ‘home’ group to strengthen its identification and idealisation as the righteous group. Anti-group attitudes that could impair the cohesion of the home group are no longer a threat to it. The most primitive dynamics of splitting, projection, idealisation and denigration hold sway. (Nitsun, personal communication, 2017)

Hopper (1988) has written about the fear of annihilation caused by traumatic experience, the essence of which is failed dependency and failed holding. He outlined the phenomenology of the fear of annihilation in terms of psychotic anxieties associated with fission and fragmentation, in oscillation with psychotic anxieties associated with fusion and confusion with parts of the self.

Hopper’s (1996) notion of ‘massification’ is helpful in understanding terrorism. This involves members of a group behaving as if they are fused, thereby avoiding any separateness and intimacy. Building on Bion’s three basic assumptions, this concept is derived from Hopper’s formulation of the fourth basic assumption which he calls ‘incohesion’ with two distinct manifestations in patterns of interaction, communication, styles of thinking and feeling as well as styles of leadership and fellowship – aggregation and massification (Hopper, p. 151). Groups where traumatic experience is prevalent are likely to be ‘incohesive’ with an oscillation between aggregation and massification. He uses the metaphor of potatoes to explain these concepts: aggregation is like a bowl of boiled potatoes, each maintaining its identity as an individual potato, whereas massifaction is like a bowl of mashed potatoes where no particular potato can be identified. In other words, in massification the members behave as if they are merged with each other, with an emphasis on their sameness. Hopper believes that this is a group defence against annihilation anxiety, the fear of the total destruction of the self. He emphasises the role of traumatic loss reminiscent of early abandonment or ‘total dependency’ experiences.

He argues that massification is based on scapegoating which is associated with unconscious shame and guilt that is projected into people and sub-groups who are perceived to be obstacles to perfection and merger with it. They are then banished from the group and deprived of the safety and support available to those who remain in the group.

Hopper explains that the roles generated through incohesion are personified by people who are particularly vulnerable to the suction power of these roles, or who have a valence fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist: a selected overview of the psychoanalytic and group analytic study of terrorism
• 2 Fundamentalism, Radicalization and Terrorism. Part 1: terrorism as dissolution in a complex system
• 3 Fundamentalism, Radicalization and Terrorism. Part 2: fundamentalism, regression and repair
• 4 Inflammatory projective identification in fundamentalist religious and economic terrorism
• 5 Rage and hatred in infants: conditions which facilitate development versus those which result in tragic delays or alarming distortions
• 6 Terror, fundamentalism, and male adolescence
• 7 Dreaming of Columbine: exploring an offender’s preoccupation with the Columbine Massacre
• 8 Pathways into terrorism: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• 9 Terrorism and mental disorder, and the role of psychiatrists in counter-terrorism in the UK
• 10 Working together to break the ‘circles of fear’ between Muslim communities and mental health services
• 11 The challenge of radicalisation: a public health approach to understanding and intervention
• Index