Psychopathy and terrorist involvement

Abstract

The study of mental disorders’ relationship with terrorist engagement spans almost half a century. During this time, the explanatory emphasis of mental disorder has lurched from the center of psychological enquiry to the periphery. Many early published analyses on the terrorist placed psychopathy as the core explanatory variable. This opinion was derived mainly from popular culture, and the desire to attribute mental disorders to those committing such heinous, violent acts. Poor research designs and a lack of empiricism ultimately undermined the arguments in favor of terrorism being rooted in psychopathy. Despite the methodological issues, concluding remarks from research exploring psychopathy in terrorism continue to hold instinctive appeal across the research field. This chapter seeks to critically examine a series of in-depth case studies of terrorist actors who have shown traits of psychopathy. Examination of these case studies highlights that, much like all mental disorders, we are not able to treat psychopathy as a core explanatory factor in terrorism. We use this finding as a starting point for our discussion.