Terrorism and the practice of angst

Abstract

Following in Hannah Arendt’s steps, this paper addresses the author’s definition of terrorism mostly from a psychoanalytical point of view and focuses further on the clinical implications related to the different thoughts on terrorism of a number of psychoanalysts. Some clinical vignettes, from individual as well as group psychotherapy, show how deep the reverberation of our way of thinking about terrorism can be in our work as psychoanalysts, particularly in regard to the integration of the destructive aspects of the personality and of the Self, and above all in cases with a history of traumatic attachment. Indeed, the psychoanalyst can actually remain embedded inside the patient's dissociative dynamics, and the treatment can fall into a painful impasse, allowing mutilated, torn, dead, and dissociated aspects to be left outside the conscious and the Self. The result of this kind of situation is a stiffening of the personality and a mortification of the whole Self.

Key words:

• psychoanalytic practice
• angst
• terrorism
• violence
• the role of the psychotherapist
• attitude towards life

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Maria Loiacono

Author

Anna Maria Loiacono, PhD, is a relational/interpersonal psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in Florence, Italy. She is a faculty, training and supervising analyst at the H.S. Sullivan Institute of Analytic Psychotherapy (IPA) of Florence, and has been vice president of the Italian Psychoanalyst Organization, Federation and Register (Opifer) since 2015. She was president of the Italian Society of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis (SIPI) from 2003 to 2010, and has been the Scientific Account of SIPI since 2010, and has been delegate member to the IFPS since 1991. She has published specialized reviews and collaborations with the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane (Psychotherapy and Human Sciences) and Ricerca Psicoanalitica (Psychoanalytic Research). Her book, Il Modello Interpersonale e la Clinica della Dissociazione (The interpersonal model and the clinic of dissociation; Ed. Termanini, Genova) was published in March 2016.