| Suicide-homicide bombing is an act of violence. The anguish faced on 9/11 is a common anguish felt throughout the world, especially in the Middle East. This qualitative dissertation explores suicide-homicide bombing from a Psychoanalytic Self Psychology perspective. The research questions focus on the feasibility of developing martyrdom self structure profiles, the influence of recruitment and training, the role of narcissism, and the value of using Self Psychology to understand suicide-homicide bombing. Five terrorist groups known for suicide terrorism were assessed: Al Qaeda, Hizballah, Hamas, The Kurdistan Worker's Party, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Data assessment involved collecting government documents, bomber interviews, training materials, and assessing the sociological and psychodynamics of killing and suicide. The results suggested that suicide terrorists do not have narcissistic personality disorders, nor are they necessarily depressed. Self Psychology's narcissistic behavior disorder appears to be the diagnostic profile of greatest utility, in which narcissistic injury cycles from humiliation to rage and revenge that ends in a grandiose suicide (i.e., martyrdom). Most suicide-homicide bombers are therefore not crazy fanatics, but rather, their destructive activity is a group-sanctioned reaction to chronic narcissistic injury. Recruitment-trainers pursue vulnerable persons and transmute mirroring, idealizing, and twinship selfobject transferences into prospective self structures, driving them through the martyrdom culture. Although Self Psychology is an individual clinical model, it warns how injured narcissism, with social support and a manipulation of empathy, can trigger such a deadly phenomena. |
