Toward a psychoanalytic theory of violence, fundamentalism and terrorism

Abstract

Why would a group of people behave in ways that appear to us as moral nihilism, such as the events of 9/11? One cause is an affective one that underlies all violent behavior, namely, narcissistic injuries severe enough to threaten the survival of the self or of the group with which the self identifies, in the absence of non-violent means of maintaining or restoring individual or collective self-esteem. But there is also a uniquely modern cognitive reason for this uniquely modern form of violence, and of the apocalyptic fundamentalism that legitimizes it: namely, that terrorists see themselves as destroying the nihilism that they perceive as coming from us, that is, from the modern Western scientific mentality that destroys the credibility of the traditional sources of moral, legal and political authority and legitimacy, God and religion. Fundamentalism originated in the United States and has spread throughout the world as a rebellion against modernity. This suggests means of curing it: by facilitating access to modern education, psychological awareness, socio-economic equality and political democracy, to help protect all societies from the affective threats of shame and humiliation, and the cognitive threats of nihilism, anomie and anarchy (and their alternatives, nationalism, dogmatism and theocracy).

Key words:

• terrorism
• fundamentalism
• shame
• morality
• nihilism
• modernity
• science

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Gilligan

James Gilligan, M.D., is a psychiatrist who has specialized in studying the causes and preventions of violence. He spent 30 years on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School, during which he headed the Institute of Law and Psychiatry, directed mental health services for the Massachusetts prisons, and directed a major violence-prevention project in the San Francisco jails. He is now a Professor in the Schools of Medicine and Law at New York University. He has also been a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge, in the UK. He has served as a consultant on violent crimes and punishments, including war crimes and terrorism, to President Clinton, Tony Blair, M.P., the Law Lords of the House of Lords, the Secretary General of the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the International Court of Justice in the Hague.