Introduction

The scientific validity of assessments of violent behavior by means of psychiatric categories has always faced two limitations. On one hand, the controversy about giving political beliefs or activity, or violent behavior in general, a label of mental disturbance was seen as an abuse of psychiatric knowledge. Categorizing politics can lead to justifications of the denigration of certain political ideas as being simply delusional or dangerous, which goes beyond simply being in agreement with the prosecution of perpetrators of violent political acts against the existing regime. The second limitation was that psychiatric evaluations of violent political crimes were mostly performed, case by case, in a forensic environment, which made them unduly dependent on categories of presumed dangerousness and legal responsibility, rather than on a clinical definition of their mental status and history. The forensic classification, in other words, hardly went beyond the distinction between psychotic and nonpsychotic offenders.¹ Psychological theories, mostly based on only a few cases, have gradually increased in number but never led to further, directly related research.^2,3

Our research group has been investigating the role of bipolar-related states in a variety of events and clinical contexts, such as HIV infection, alcohol abuse by depressed and anxious patients, binge eating, substance abuse, and various kinds of addiction. These studies converged in showing that minor, less-than-manic mood states, including temperamental dispositions (cyclothymic and hyperthymic) are related to a wide range of physiological risk behaviors. For such risks to originate in mood orientation, one does not need to think of a major agitated psychotic mania or mixed state: either a dominant temperament or a protracted hypomania is enough to justify an outcome of engagement in a wide range of activities, whether legal or not, possibly, but not necessarily sociopathic or violent.^4–8 For instance, addiction to alcohol and/or heroin is related to temperamental cyclothymia, rather than axis I dual diagnosis. The move toward sociopathy itself, at least in some cases, may be the result of physiological risk disposition, in a way that does not require the labeling of the resulting behavior (e.g., political violence) as pathological, but makes it interpretable on psychological/clinical grounds.

This paper’s aim was to illustrate a series of reports and comments and some data concerning the psychological common ground of political terrorism. To be precise, what we mean by “political terrorism” is an organized and intentional activity that has political aims and is practiced by single individuals or, more often, groups of people who are opposed to a dominant majority, within a certain territory. The choice of terrorism can thus be viewed as a kind of subtle, low-intensity, and scattered war that is focused on politics, rather than a classic struggle for territorial control fought out between armies. It sometimes appears as a civil war, or, more often, implies the clandestine activity of a minority, partly because of the impossibility of sustaining a direct military struggle.

On psychiatric grounds, the focus of our interest is not the political content that is prompted by terrorist movements, nor are we understating the fact that violent political confrontation is itself a sign of psychiatric orientation. Instead, we are ready to put forward the idea that formal and transpolitical radical choices, either of an illegal lifestyle or of activities involving major risks, can be linked with certain mental states, especially for small groups living in secrecy showing a high level of internal ideological cohesion and a no-return attitude toward commitment to radical choices.

Terrorists usually act in small units, though “lone wolves” exist as well, who may have clear-cut ideological positions, but they remain isolated on the operational plane. Available data about the psycho(patho)logical profile of terrorists are sparse: the few studies that are readily available are those on identified living terrorists (judging by evidence given in the trials of those who personally admitted to having been terrorists), and the statistical data imply a number of documented cases belonging to the same terrorist organization, or at least in the same political area.

Armed political fighting against the system can be distinguished as belonging to one of at least two subtypes, according to Post.⁹ On one hand, there are groups fighting for the preservation of their original culture and social environment, in opposition to an enemy that is perceived as “alien,” that is, as a hostile force usurping territory, resources, and rights (possibly in a revolutionary mode) or invading from the outside. In addition, there are groups fighting for revolution, aiming at the subversion of what has been considered as normal, or acceptable. This latter kind of terrorism is directed against an inner enemy, which is antagonized but also has shared root features (familial, cultural, ethnic).

As argued by Post, there seems to be a deep difference between those who aim to subvert their own society, the “world of their fathers,” and those who, in their view, fight to defend their tradition or retaliate against an attack against the “world of their fathers.” The first profile appears to imply a deeper conflict, and a higher level of deviance, among those committed to antitraditional revolutions. Such a statement, as anticipated, does not point to any correspondence between specific contents or a generic judgment of “abnormality” in assessing radicalism, but it suggests that some mental conditions bear a higher likelihood of embracing and engaging in aggressive and outlawed forms of politics, usually on the basis of a radical disagreement with the status quo.

On logical grounds, when terrorists join together as a group, it is quite unlikely that they are in a psychotic state—at least, not all of them at once. It is also unlikely that they feel depressed, or that they are suffering from a severe anxiety disorder, which usually holds people back from making choices, running risks, or engaging in new experiences. Cases of psychotic terrorism take place as isolated attacks, or as very short-lasting participation in group activities. Other categories of mental states show a better fit with a possible long-lasting terrorist activity within the same group, or between similarly oriented groups, which implies a higher level of stability, enduring determination, planning attack campaigns consisting of different actions, and persistent egosynthonia, that is, the situation of someone being convinced that they are fighting to fulfill a right and crucial vow. Mood states of a less-than-manic grade, for instance, would allow an adept to stay within the boundaries of social interaction, military effectiveness, and cautiousness due to a clandestine status, and maintaining a grip on reality, despite an altered set of expectations. The Italian period known familiarly as the “years of lead” displays an interesting viewpoint for the study of terrorist psychology for two main reasons: first, it was a historically defined period (1968–1988); second, the number of ascertained participants in terrorist activities was quite large, especially for the group called the Red Brigades (RBs), the largest European terrorist group known to history. Moreover, a sufficient number of documentaries, interviews, and biographical or true-crime publications are available to allow the possible psychological trajectories of Italian neofascist (right)- and communist (left)-wing extremist groups to be accurately profiled.