Osama Bin Laden: Humble Megalomaniac
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Aggression and Violent Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aggviobeh Osama bin Laden: Humble megalomaniac Peter Langman Drift Net Securities, 825 North Cedar Crest Blvd., Allentown, PA 18104, United States of America ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: This article firstexamines Osama bin Laden in the context of Islam, al-Qaeda, and other extremist ideologies. The Psychology of terrorism analysis critiques his use of collective guilt to justify killing innocent people and his misuse of Islam as a rationale Osama bin Laden for terrorism, highlighting the extent of his bigotry and paranoia. Next, the theme of humiliation is discussed at Ideological violence both the cultural and the personal level. It is hypothesized that bin Laden utilized violence to overcome his Ideological extremism humiliation and damaged masculinity. Finally, his ideology, terrorist acts, and behavior within his family are Humiliation ’ Damaged masculinity discussed in the context of Theodore Millon s work on personality disorders, noting avoidant, compulsive, Mass murder masochistic, sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, and narcissistic traits. 1. Introduction 2. Method The study of terrorists draws on literature in many disciplines, My guiding principle in studying bin Laden was to focus as much as including psychology, sociology, political science, and criminology, as possible on original sources, including bin Laden’s speeches, interviews, well as more specific domains such as radicalization, conspiracy the and public documents, as well as private letters and documents from ories, political extremism, religious fundamentalism, bigotry, anti- within al Qaeda that were discovered after bin Laden’s death. These Semitism, and more. Though it is not possible within the confines of a sources allow bin Laden to speak in his own voice and hopefully mini journal article to review the potentially relevant literature in all these mize any bias in interpretation.
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