ABSTRACT
The study of terrorism in America have to find its way between the Scylla of vagueness and confusion and the Charybdis of a sterile, purist fixation on definitions to make any progress at all. There has been an upsurge in terrorism during the last year in Italy, Spain, Turkey, and a few other countries. The resurgence of Italian terrorism has been widely reported all over the world following the spectacular abduction and subsequent murder of Aldo Moro, the leading Italian politician. Problematical in a different way are attempts from the other end of the political spectrum to interpret the origins of terrorism. A great deal of work remains to be done on, for instance, the importance of ideology in terrorism and about the interaction between individual psychological motives and objective, that is political and social conditions. But there are also other aspects of terrorism which may forever remain beyond our comprehension.
