Sverre Varvin and Vamik D. Volkan, editors.  “Violence or Dialogue?” London: International Psychoanalytic Association. 2003, 274 pages.  

This book tries to examine terrorism from a psychoanalytic perspective.  In the final analysis, the effort fails, essentially because terrorism cannot be explained by a Freudian analysis of the terrorists and because, except for the introductory chapter by a journalist, all the chapters are by practicing psychoanalysts.  Psychoanalytic theory has had a tremendous impact on the social sciences, but social scientists were not welcome in this volume.  They might have given the work both a broader perspective and more precision.

While Sverre Varvin acknowledges that looking at “the terrorists’ psychology” has not paid off, other contributors to the volume have in fact focused on mentally disturbed persons.  In looking at suicide terrorists, Ami Pedahzur (Suicide Terrorism) found that terrorist organizations tend to steer clear of those with serious emotional problems because of their unreliability.  Instead, he found “normal” people, people angered by the killing of a friend or relative, women who were in a precarious position because of divorce or unwanted pregnancy, and so on.

A key point that some contributors made was the central role played by shame and humiliation.  Certainly these concepts offer an important tool for understanding some kinds of terrorism, but the book falters on clarity as to what terrorism is.  For example, state terrorism is not necessarily explained by such factors.

When the United States mined harbors in Nicaragua, the motivation was one of maintaining U.S. dominance in the area and eliminating a hostile government.  Similarly, Ronald Reagan’s aid to contra terrorists (“freedom fighters”), who attacked nursing stations and raped and murdered the nurses, was aimed at the same goal.  It served to terrorize the population into submission, so that the weary country voted the Sandinistas out. 

So what is terrorism?  There are lone terrorists such as Ted Kaczynski, the Unibomber.  There are organizations that use terrorism as a tool, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other Palestinian groups or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.  There is terrorism used by a régime to control its population, such as France under Robespierre or the Soviet Union under Stalin. And then there is state terrorism as an instrument in international affairs, such as the activities of the United States in Nicaragua, of Israel’s Shin Beit in various countries in Europe and the Middle East, and Russia in Europe (e.g., Alexander Litvinenko’s poisoning?).  Each of these kinds of terrorism has its own characteristics and motivations.  This book lacks clarity in sorting these things out.

While Werner Bohleber explains Arab terrorism with reference to “collective phantasms” such as the notion that Americans are “soaking up our wealth,” “devouring our property,” etc., Palestinian psychoanalyst George Awad tells his colleagues that the history of Western imperialism in the Arab world is real and in fact is alive and well.

Let’s end with a few words about J. Anderson Thomson Jr.’s chapter. He blames terrorism in large measure on the evil consequences of “the violence that resides at the core of all religion.” While he has a point that at least most religions have been manifested by their followers in brutal violence, it was not religion that motivated Pol Pot.  Religion has been read in various ways, as peaceful and even pacifist, as militant and violent, or simply irrelevant to conflict.  Thomson’s view is a caricature.

“Violence or Dialogue?” has some useful insights, but in the end it misses the target.