Terrorist organizations: Group-analytic and psychoanalytic perspectives

Abstract

In the present article, we aim to broaden our understanding of the phenomenon of terror in terms of group-analytic and psychoanalytic conceptualizations (Freud, 1915; Shadach et al., 2017; Harris and Meltzer, 1976; Hopper, 2003a, 2003b, 2009). We present a conceptualization of what we call a ‘dynamic terror matrix’ and characterize its unique features using Da’esh1 as an illustrative example. As Da’esh is an extremist organization (Lahoud, 2014; Omer and Schweitzer, 2016; Ryan, 2015), with a systematic and future-oriented ideology it constitutes a social phenomenon that exemplifies major features of the ‘dynamic terror matrix’.