The Psychology of Terrorists

Most people believe that terrorists are simply "evil" or "psychologically damaged/ deranged" which in fact is a terrible misconception. In fact psychologists have found quite the contrary. Psychologists who have studied terrorists groups have found that terrorists are actually stable individuals, who are not paranoid or delusional. The one characteristic that makes them different from normal individuals is their ability to "turn off" their sense of empathy when working towards their goals or beliefs. Despite what some hardcore Neo Darwinists might say, empathy and compassion seem to be natural for human beings. It's natural for us to feel others' pain and help them get through it. Lacking the ability to emphathise is what might show signs of psychopathy.

One of the most significant fact of most terrorists are that they are young men, usually adolescents. Adolescence can be one of the most psychologically difficult period during a person's life. During this time an individual becomes more aware of themselves as a separate individual, and a sense of vulnerability along with fragility kicks in. This is the reason that adolescents often join gangs or begin to follow fashion or pop groups. Belonging to a group helps to remove their sense of separateness and helps strengthen their identity. The sense of an identity / meaning and purpose can be sooo intoxicating that it might make a person subconsciously prepared to part with their empathy. Through encouragement of their leaders and other members, terrorists use a number of different techniques to do this. They basically make the members of their group less humane, seeing them as things rather than individuals. They view each member as responsible for the crimes of the others. Mortality is drawn from the other groups, and their suffering is minimized. The behavior of the terrorists' is "neutralized" with the belief that magnitude of their cause or goal makes individual acts of brutality necessary.

The main ideology amongst terrorists are aided with this process. See, when people talk on this belief system they start looking at the world in a more different, abstract form. The world become more intellectualized rather than being more direct. To them the world is only made up of categories and concepts, this develops a dry and rigid outlook. This outlook becomes soo powerful that they no longer feel the immediacy of experience and contact. They then become in lay man's language "heartless" . They basically get encourage to see humans as concepts instead of their own identities, which makes us a part of their poisonous game. Other than groups, there are terrorists called "Lone - Wolf Terrorists". Research has shown that a significant number of these lone - wolves suffer from a diagnosable mental illness. This shows that for some it is not ideology that drives them, it's a combination of many factors like anger or even depression. Further studies have indicated that a large percentage of these terrorists are found to be mentally ill when compared to group terrorists or normal people. Surprisingly, mental illness and violence are starkly different characteristics in people, one does not help to predict the other.

If a person shows signs of high, medium or low risk for general violence, then that person would be most likely to act out violently when not in treatment and under a lot of stress, or even if their ego gets wounded such as being disciplined during work. People who have engaged in general violence appear to have a unique set of risk and resiliency factors. This is mostly same in the case of lone - wolf terrorists. It's also possible that using Risk Reduction Planning Tools while a person is young, and is displaying risk factors can prevent tragic incidents as the person gets older. The risk tools used for those at risk for violence are based on the concept of chronic violence. This sort of explains only part of the psyche of a lone wolf, it doesn't completely ,make sense. A single person committing murders, or even attempted mass murder cannot be explained through this theory. A new theory should be found for the explanation of the lone wolf as no valid one has been proved just yet. #studyofthemind #mentis #blogpost #pschy #studium #brain #studiummentis #blog #SanyaSamant #terrorism #insidethemind #terror #secrettoterrorism #psychologicalprofile