Clio’s Psyche Understanding the "Why" of Culture, Current Events, History, and Society Volume 8, Number 4 March 2002 The Psychology of Terrorism and Mourning September 11 Special Issue In Search of bin Laden Mourning, Melancholia, and Ted Goertzel the Palestinians Rutgers University Robert Pois Adam Robinson, an author and journalist University of Denver who has lived for 10 years in the Persian Gulf area, and has written the best book I have read on the Saudi Paul Elovitz dissident and terrorist. Though this book is not a Ramapo College of New Jersey psychobiography, to the best of my knowledge it How will our nation mourn the terrible provides more information on Osama bin Laden's events of September 11, 2001? What are the conse- childhood and personal life than previous sources: quences of a failure to mourn losses? What is the The most useful prior source I had found is a bio- role of war in mourning collective tragedy? As graphical sketch available online from PBS at Americans, historians of modern European history, <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ and psychohistorians, we have decided to reflect binladen/who/bio.html>. What makes Robinson’s upon the issue of mourning and how it relates to a volume special is that he conducted interviews major event of our lives. This brief article will pro- with members of bin Laden's family during the vide more historical insight and more questions (Continued on page 178) than answers but a historical perspective is vital to understanding these important questions. In a truly insightful work on the impact of "Home" Symposium the Great War upon the German home front, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914- 1939 (1984), Robert Weldon Whalen makes use of Home, Sweet Home Sigmund Freud’s differentiation between mourning Building and Destabilizing the and melancholia. Mourning, on both personal and national levels, means acceptance of loss and a Home Sphere willingness to go beyond it. It was naive, Freud Peter W. Petschauer thought, to believe that one could really end one’s Appalachian State University occasional ruminating about this. The term “closure,” so much a part of today’s psychological Everyone, it seems, has opinions about the lexicon, would have been rather strange for him to topic of "home." Some of these opinions are on the use in this context. Yet, Freud did believe that a surface and some are deeply imbedded. In some period of mourning, varying in length with the in- ways, home is as straightforward as Robert Frost’s dividuals involved and appropriate to familial and “Home is where they have to take you in” or Tho- mas Wolfe’s idea that one cannot return home. But in other ways home constitutes one of the most Turn to the next page for complex concepts and most profound psychologi- (Continued on page 207) IN THIS ISSUE Page 166 Clio’s Psyche March 2002 A Window to the Middle East ................................... 195 IN THIS ISSUE Michael E. Nielsen What’s Osama bin Laden Doing on The Psychology of Terrorism and My Office Door? ....................................................... 196 Mourning September 11 Sam A. Mustafa In Search of bin Laden.................................................165 Understanding the Gap Between American Ted Goertzel And Iranian Students’ Views..................................... 198 Mourning, Melancholia, and the Palestinians..............165 Simine Vazire with Patricia McCord Robert Pois and Paul Elovitz Individual Identity, Collective Experience, A Nation Mourns: The Kübler-Ross Model And Memory ............................................................. 199 Applied to the World Trade Center Disaster ...............168 Daniel Klenbort John Scott Smith The Infantilization of the American People............... 200 Counseling Alongside Ground Zero............................170 H. John Rogers Irene Javors The Power of Images and Symbols: The Role of Children’s Delayed Reactions to September 11 ..........171 Television in the Attacks of September 11................ 201 Robert Quackenbush Maria T. Miliora The Capture of Barbastro: Terror, Vengeance, and Fantasy War in Hollywood Action Films.................. 203 Politics in 11th-Century Spain.....................................173 Ryan Staude Brian Catlos Magical Thinking as a Response to Terrorism .......... 205 Sane People in Groups Can Be Terrorists Helen Smith When They Feel Threatened........................................175 A Nation Awakened? Terrorists Test Jonathan T. Drummond America's Resolve ..................................................... 206 Beyond Martyrdom and Salvation...............................177 Craig D. Morrow and David J. Walker Chris Tatarka "Home" Symposium A Psychoanalytic Approach to bin Laden, Political Violence, and Islamic Suicidal Terrorism ...................181 Home, Sweet Home: Building and Destabilizing Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin The Home Sphere...................................................... 165 Peter W. Petschauer The Hunt for bin Laden: America’s “Second Intelligence Failure”?....................................184 Responses ............................................................... 213 Aubrey Immelman Michael Britton Anatoly Isaenko Dan Dervin David Lotto Mohamed Atta’s Personality .......................................185 Paul H. Elovitz Evelyn Sommers Aubrey Immelman Amy C. Hudnall Howard F. Stein John Walker Lindh, the Taliban, and Me ....................189 Reply ...................................................................... 222 F. Lincoln Grahlfs Peter W. Petschauer A Selected Bibliography on Suicidal Terrorism..........189 Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin A Psychogeographical Tale of Two Cities ................ 223 Book Review by Peter W. Petschauer Denigrating Terrorists as Cowards ..............................195 Herbert Barry III Calls for Papers and Bulletin Board .......................... 224 personal circumstances, was healthy. It enabled republic, was an inability of Germans to accept one to accept the reality of death. defeat in a war in whose outcome they had in- Melancholia, on the other hand, results vested so much effort. Obviously, individual Ger- from an inability to accept loss. This failure may man families could and did experience individual stem from a variety of reasons but in the end it re- losses just as did families in France or Great Brit- volves around an inability or unwillingness to ac- ain. But, loss on a national basis was difficult for cept the loss of an individual with whom one has many Germans to assimilate; for some, it proved to unresolved issues. It may involve an unwillingness be impossible. Millions of Germans were not emo- to accept the degree of emotional investment one tionally prepared to accept the reality of defeat. has had in an individual resulting in a sense of This was partly because throughout the war their frustration or betrayal. For Whalen, one of the pri- armies occupied territories of France and Belgium mary reasons for the sort of outrage generated by and to the east the Russians accepted defeat in the Germany’s defeat in the Great War and the imposi- humiliating Treaty of Brest Litovsk. For these Ger- tion, as many Germans saw it, of an unwelcome mans too much national blood had been spilled, March 2002 Clio’s Psyche Page 167 too much energy had been expended, and too much Europe. lebensraum (room for living, feeding) lost, for the While reeling from the shock of the terror- cause to be lost. Many blamed Jews, Communists, ism of September 11, Americans held many fune- and the democratic Weimar Republic for the disas- real ceremonies at Yankee Stadium, at Ground trous, unexpected outcome of the war and the hu- Zero, at sporting events, and even at the Winter miliating elements in the Treaty of Versailles. Na- Olympics in Salt Lake City. The media, politicians, zism was only one of many movements seeking to and public focused on extremely public funerals, avoid the work of mourning and healing by focus- interviews of survivors, and memorials. As of Feb- ing on the sense of betrayal. The Nazi focus on the ruary 2002, The New York Times is still running dead of World War I, so dramatically portrayed in individual obituaries of the close to 3000 people Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1934), rep- who died in the World Trade Center. While such resented a commitment to vengeance -- future war memorials may contribute to the mourning process, and future deaths -- rather than a willingness to they may not necessarily have this effect. Irene truly mourn and move on with the issues of life. In Javors, in a personal communication, maintains short, since loss was not accepted on the national “that this ‘spectacle of death’ functions as a de- level, mature mourning was avoided and the emo- fense against experiencing those nasty real feelings tional and military issues would be replayed in of terror in the face of loss. By going to the funer- World War II with disastrous consequences for als of people we do not know, we allow ourselves to go through a sort of pantomime of grief once removed … while tricking ourselves into believing Clio’s Psyche we are really feeling all this pain and loss.” As a grief specialist and psychotherapist “trained to ask Vol. 8, No. 4 March 2002 myself, what lies beneath what is being stated….” ISSN 1080-2622 she remains unclear as to what is happening. As scholars of the emotional life of nations, we need Published Quarterly by The Psychohistory Forum 627 Dakota Trail, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 to understand far more