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Abstract
On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik emailed a compendium entitled, “2083: A Declaration of European Independence,” to more than 1,000 addresses before bombing government buildings in Oslo and attacking a Labor Party youth camp, killing 77 people. This article adopts a credulous attitude and analyzes a personal section of his compendium from a personal construct psychology perspective, as if it were a self-characterization. Its aim is to understand further the construing processes of individuals who become “radicalized” or engage in acts of extreme violence, on the assumption that such understanding is a prerequisite for preventative and restorative strategies. The personal construct formulation of Breivik's construing and actions is compared with the analysis of terrorism by an historian, Roger Griffin.
Notes
1Breivik, who was born in London, uses an Anglicized version of his name in this document.
2A complete list of the other construct poles that Breivik used to describe his “old” and “new” selves may be obtained from the first author on request.