ABSTRACT
At the beginning of this book, it was pointed out that those wishing for a practical ‘manual’ to understand and/or ‘deal with’ the problem of terrorism would be disappointed. In addition, however, and something which might begin to be clear after the preceding six chapters is that those interested in seeing the potential of a ‘psychology of terrorism’ develop may be equally disappointed and perhaps surprised at our lack of progression. It might be easy to be flippant and to do disservice to the difficult efforts made to understand this complex area more generally, but we must face facts explicitly: although we can develop potential models of terrorist behaviour (as the last three chapters have demonstrated), and while we can begin to attempt to ‘make terrorism known’ in more accessible and straightfoward ways, the progress of psychological research is unsatisfactory. We are seriously lacking in the data needed not only to inform our theories, but to test even the most basic of hypotheses. As a result, and having (a) reviewed the psychological literature and (b) suggested new ways of understanding terrorism from psychological and criminological perspectives, it would be easy to rush to premature conclusions (and easier again to admit defeat and negatively suggest that we can do little or nothing in reality), and so we ought to proceed with particular caution at this juncture.
