Psychoanalysis of terrorism: geopolitical or intrapsychic threat?

Psychoanalysis of terrorism

Abstract

Terrorism as a phenomenon is widespread and has been known for a long time, but today, in the light of the imbalance in the global political and economic system and the openness of social borders present against this background, favorable conditions have formed for its spread. The popularization of the Western lifestyle, based on intensive consumption of products and services that are inaccessible to residents of developing countries, exposes the cultural and economic gap between the countries of the first and third world. While residents of prosperous countries play the role of conscientious consumers in the name of the prosperity of their states, watching this life residents of poor countries with inefficient economies feel even more oppressed. Difficult life in disadvantaged countries leads to the spread of terrorism in conditions of critical stratification of the world community. The main task of terrorists is to create a threat to peoples and Governments through violent actions, whom they consider oppressors or enemies. This should eventually lead to a change in the existing model of society. What if we look at this phenomenon from the inside of the human psyche of all the actors in this conflict: members of terrorist groups and their opponents waging a “war on terrorism”? What are the intrapsychic causes leading to the spread of terrorism? Can humanity live in peace or does terrorism reflect the need of human civilization for war? What role does the psychic instance of the Super-Ego and the protective mechanisms of projection and projective identification play in the physical extermination of other people? "Why do we hate war so much, you and I and many others, why do we not perceive it as naturally as we perceive all other annoying sorrows of life? After all, war seems to flow from the very nature of things, has a solid biological basis, and in practice it can hardly be avoided." (Freud in a letter to Einstein). Freud was the first to put forward the idea that war gives an outlet to suppressed impulses, namely, the death drive, which is inevitably present in the psyche of every living person. Since the death drive is unbearably difficult to endure mentally to avoid excessive overload, the psyche transforms internal psychotic anxiety into a real external danger in order to be able to control it. Thus, international terrorism and the so-called "war on terrorism" may be a necessary object for the internal aggression of modern civilization. In this article, we will consider through a psychoanalytic prism the question of why war and the modern manifestation of war in the form of terrorism seem to be an inevitable and ineradicable part of human history, as Freud writes in his letter to Einstein, and whether civilization can move to a new stage of development, leaving military actions in the past.