The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 39, Number 3 Fall 2001

Suicide Terrorists: How Can They Do it?
by Alan J. Eisnitz, M.D.

An interesting item appeared in the stories about the recent terrorist attack on New York and Washington. An American neighbor described the next-door Arab family (husband and wife, 3 or 4 children) as pleasant people who seemed entirely normal and unusual as far as a very superficial relationship with them revealed. Recently, the Arab wife and children left; two days later the Arab man piloted one of the planes in the suicide attack on the World Trade Center.

This Arab man was apparently willing to abandon his ties to his wife and children (if they really were his family and not a means to conceal his true identity), and additionally willing to give up his life for his mission. Since further information indicates that he had some higher education, had lived for some time without being involved in major crime, and was, or at least could play the role of, a husband and father, he must have had some elements of a more mature personality organization. This would imply that he also had some qualities of a mature conscience. If so, he also abandoned moral standards that should have precluded, among other things, the deliberate, purposeful (i.e. with the conscious goal of causing many deaths) indiscriminate mass murder of innocent people. Let's accept the possibility that he was a 'culture-appropriate' seemingly normal person who then took part in the WTC massacre. Could a 'normal' person do a thing like this? Is this an example of a case of truly heroic self-sacrifice? Is it like the instance of a fireman who knows a building may collapse but still enters to effect a rescue? Is it the same as the suicide bombers who blow themselves up? How is it related to spontaneous pathological suicide?

Let's first approach these questions indirectly and look at a horrible episode that took place some years ago (1978). This event may help illuminate some of the phenomena related to the question of suicide terrorism. A religious cult headed by a Rev. Jim Jones established a community in Guyana. The essence of the story is that Rev. Jones came to believe and asserted (preached) that either Armageddon or an invasion by the CIA was about to occur. He convinced his followers that in order to escape this and achieve salvation they had to drink, and even to give to their children, a suicide potion. Over 900 people followed his advice and died.

These cult members had come to accept Jim Jones as a kind of savior-god. They believed in him and in effect turned over to him many of the mental functions, including major components of their capacity for reality perception that normally would be independently performed by people. As a result of a process very similar to brainwashing, Jones became able to decide for them what was right or wrong, what was true or untrue, real or unreal, where and how they should live. He was like a constant super-hypnotist, one who became internalized into their personalities as if he were a part of them, and one who could give commands about life-and later death. These people were seriously mentally ill before they ever met Jim Jones. In an effort to stabilize their crumbling individual identities and personalities, they turned to Jones as an omnipotent parent figure who, they unconsciously wished, might rescue them. They believed that his perceptions were correct, almost as if they were their own perceptions; they accepted his conclusions and his invitation to suicide and possible salvation. (In normal development, young children view their parents as omnipotent; this illusion allows the child, realistically helpless, to maintain necessary feelings of security.)

You may see some similarity to the suicide bomber. The bombers, as a rule, are mostly young men who seem to be emotionally immature and are still going through an adolescent crisis. They tend to have been religious and in some cases have been selected for years of training. Many of them led very undistinguished and unfulfilled lives. For many reasons, their prolonged immaturity led them to be incapable of establishing stable systems for maintaining self-esteem, for regulating internal aggression or for promoting stable identity organization. Healthy personality development includes (requires) the ability to tame and link destructive rage to useful goals; the failure of appropriate development leaves destructive rage untamed, like an uncontrolled bomb that can explode in any direction, often at the self. Where a healthy person may react to a defeat by mobilizing his aggression to fuel a better effort for success, the kind of person we are describing would express his rage as feelings of self-contempt or in an outburst of destruction. This inner lack of control causes feelings of helplessness. Such people are impotent psychologically and chronically enraged.

This destabilizing self-hatred coupled with the reality of the hopeless quality of their lives in the camps, abandoned by the other Arab countries (a factor insufficiently recognized either by the Palestinians who find it more convenient not to, or by the press) and often under Israeli regulation, greatly adds to the conflict. While much of this rage is turned against themselves, it is also quite easy (and culturally enhanced) to attempt to avoid their internal conflicts of hating themselves by trying to direct the rage away from themselves--expressing it instead at the demonized Israel. This leads them to be more predisposed to surrender to the political and 'religious' forces (an unconscious equivalent of the omnipotent parent protector) that provide a solution to their internal problems by offering acceptance and rewards, sometimes large, if they give up their lives in the service of an idealized goal--in the case of a Palestinian, the struggle against and destruction of Israel. This step is encouraged by the promise that in heaven Allah (the ultimate omnipotent protector) will accept them and they will be provided with all sorts of earthly and sexual rewards.

The Guyana cult members surrendered their view of reality to their leader, Jim Jones, whom they unconsciously wished and considered to be omnipotent. The Arab suicide bombers surrender to their version of Islam and to their wish for acceptance by the idealized 'religious' leaders and warriors (also viewed as omnipotent) in the fight to destroy the outside enemy, Israel, the US etc. By their unconscious bond with their admired omnipotent forces, they achieve an illusion of psychological stability; in addition they can feel more of a sense of self-esteem by directing their overwhelming rage outwardly, away from themselves. (Rage directed at the self creates self-contempt.) Instead of feeling like hopeless failures, they feel like warriors in a glorious battle. The bomb explosion, simultaneous with destroying the enemy, may represent a super-violent fusion with Allah.

In the 'usual' clinical pathological suicide, patients are plagued by inner feelings of intense helplessness, hopelessness and self-criticism. They tend to regard themselves as unworthy and deserving only of contempt. They feel unworthy of love; being loved may even increase their profound guilt. Often their negative hateful self-feelings are not based on reality; only sources within their own minds support it. They may be accomplished and fine people but they excoriate themselves with self-hatred. When suicide occurs it is often an attempt to achieve peace from and surrender to these intense inner hateful feelings. Sometimes the suicide is experienced as a deserved punishment. While there may be elements of a fantasy of atonement and then acceptance, sometimes by God, in their action, rarely is there the conscious feeling of reward that the suicide bomber seeks.

The suicide bomber attempts an external solution, he attempts to go outside himself to achieve a bond in heaven with omnipotent Allah, a bond that will enhance him. The suicide wish of the severe depressive, with superficially similar conflicts, attempts more of an internal solution; the wish here is more to achieve peace by destroying the unworthy self, not like the bomber's goal to create an idealized self. While there are some similarities, the 'usual' kind of pathological suicide is different from either that of the cult member or of the suicide bomber, although depression may play a role in leading a person to the cult or bomber role.

The suicide hijackers in the current attack may actually be quite similar to the simple suicide bombers. In some of the (unrealistically glorified, in my opinion) impressions of them as described in press reports, they could be considered to be older, better educated, more mature personalities who have obtained complicated training, possibly even having families of their own and quietly living ordinary lives as part of their 'cover' while awaiting, even for years, the signal to carry out their assignment. In this view they could be seen as normal or even as legitimate heroes in the service of the goals of their culture; they sacrifice themselves as any true hero may do for the good of the group.

I do not accept such an evaluation. They could just as easily be seen as a superficially higher-level type, but in fact brainwashed just as much as the simple naive suicide bombers are. Then under the illusion that they are bonded to the grand political/religious brotherhood (the unconsciously wished for omnipotent force) and joined in an exalted and rewarded crusade to liberate their brethren, they can seem to be under control. But, while I have never seen a suicide-terrorist, I have seen people who can function and feel powerful only with the illusion that they are magically joined with someone or something that they regard as omnipotent. Without the illusion, they experience themselves as weak and degraded. A psychopath who may wear the uniform of a high-ranking officer may play the role quite well. But if his efforts become unsuccessful, he tends to become weak and inept. To seem and feel like a powerful person, he requires the magic bond/disguise.

There are crucial distinctions between 'true' heroes and these hijackers. One is the role of destructive aggression; the true hero does not abandon his previously held moral values. His goal is not to kill innocents; his goal is to accomplish a mission. Killing may be necessary, but it is not sought as a primary goal. The hijackers had no conflict about killing as many people as possible; that was an essential part of their mission- they need the violent destructive fusion with God. I believe that we can evaluate the maturity of an individual or a culture in part on the basis of the attitudes toward destructive sadism. The goal of destroying people, of murder as a goal in itself cannot be considered moral. The suicide hijackers in fact are grandiose killers, driven and dominated by the wish to kill.

Another distinction may be seen in the role of the suicide. A true hero may accept the risk of his death, he may even accept or choose it, but only if it is inevitable. We don't know what these hijackers felt, but I suspect it is similar to the naive suicide bomber, who seeks his death with the goal of achieving resultant glory for himself. Some suicide terrorists may seek death, like a depressed person, as an unconsciously sought punishment. But as a rule, the suicide is expected to serve an important wish for them: to establish a bond with Allah in heaven.† This is a supremely self- centered wish. True heroism would be altruistic.

Could the hijacker type, presumably more mature than the suicide bomber, remain undetected, like a spore or seed quietly "awaiting" the proper signal/circumstances to germinate-to spring into action? Could they lead a "parallel life", undetected, as some spies do? I doubt it; these men are driven by grandiose primitive destructiveness. They need to kill and be killed in their mission; quiet living would not come easily to them. I would expect this quality to be revealed somehow, at the very least by the expression of their grandiosity and contempt for those not part of their secret plan.

These are my opinions from afar; my own biases may have influenced them. I'd like to hear your views.