ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that what the people see in terrorist actions and in the terrorist mind is not so much a function of overwhelming rage, hatred, and destructiveness, though these may indeed be encountered. In many ways, terrorism has succeeded in changing—perhaps forever—their feeling of personal and social security and their accustomed mode of life. That the subject of the terrorist's mind rivets psychoanalytic attention is understandable: as psychoanalysts, the people are torn between their social indignation with atrocities of whatever sort and scope, and their clinical and therapeutic stance, which generally deeply imbues their social posture. The chapter describes that the youthful quest for a Utopian state reflects the quest, poignantly experienced during adolescence and young adulthood, for the integration of the two modalities. Youth is deeply concerned with this integration and is quite anxious lest what was dearly cherished in childhood might be relinquished without sufficient "compensation".
