Psychological Aspects of the “Lone, Psychiatrically Deranged” Terrorist
Between the Media/government spin that these kinds of atrocities are the result of a “lone, psychiatrically deranged” individual’s psychopathology and the supposition that these attacks are the result of Jihadi ideology is the more complex explanation of the ways in which the zeitgeist or weltanschauung shape the behavior of troubled individuals. Understanding how the culture interacts with the mind of the lone terrorist can help us improve our efforts to protect innocents, increase our vigilance, and begin to lessen the tendency for such individuals to express their psychopathology as murderous terror.