NCJ Number
76478
Date Published
Unknown
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article outlines the basic psychological impulses of those who commit violent attacks on prominent persons for personal reasons.
Abstract
Although such acts, termed 'anomic,' are often justified by the perpetrator in political terms, they are usually not a logical or realistic means for advancing the terrorist's political goals. Therefore, the connecting link between the act and the result is assumed to be a mental invention of the attacker. Despite the mental aberrations which can be clinically defined and diagnosed as the reasons for such attacks, the basic motivation in these situations is frustration. Yet the aberrations do contribute to the increased tension and include alienation, material and/or emotional deprivation, sociopathic personality disturbance, and depression. Other identifiable aberrations are inadequate personality type, obsessive-compulsive reaction, inferiority complex, delusions of grandeur, paranoid personality, and paranoid schizophrenia. The build-up of frustration, increased by the presence of any of these mental conditions, can result in the final tension-relieving act of attack, injury, or murder. A point can be reached past which no course of action remains open to this individual except violent retaliation against what is considered the source of misery. The breaking point of such an individual is the point at which attack or killing becomes the answer to the problem, either for the terrorist or for some imagined group the offender thinks will be helped by the destruction of the 'menace.' No references are supplied.