ABSTRACT
Introduction Since September 11, 2001, the usual complaints of everyday life in my practice of psychotherapy have given way to serious concerns and anxiety about bigger issues of safety and security. I notice a sense of vulnerability and helplessness that is not just personal but of a larger scale. More articulate people express continuing frustration with the government’s failure to raise deeper questions about the reasons for al-Qaeda’s monstrous attack on innocent people. “Why are we hated so much? What have we done to deserve this? Are they so jealous of our prosperity and freedom that they have to destroy what we value so much?” Some spend most of their therapeutic hour with me on such questions. It is clear that these people are not necessarily interested in hearing trite political and historical explanations, but are looking for something deeper, something which will encompass more than self-serving justifications that the deprived and poor want to destroy the richest nation of the world out of envy.
