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Professor promotes book on psychology of terrorists

Political psychologist Jerrold Post listened to a Palestinian terrorist nonchalantly discuss how he murdered a Jewish woman on a hijacked Egyptian flight, but this meeting was just part of the job for the GW professor.

Post, director of the GW political psychology program and a former CIA profiler, discussed this interview and other examples at a talk with 40 people at the Elliott School of International Affairs Thursday night. The event - The Mind of the Terrorist: When Hatred is Bred in the Bone - was held to promote Post's latest book, "The Mind of the Terrorist."

"When he talked about 'blowing her brains out' he sounded like he was taking the trash out," Post said of the terrorist, Mohammad Rezaq. "He wasn't killing people. He was killing the 'enemy.'"

But Post said not all terrorists are fanatical and crazy.

"Terrorists are psychologically normal," he said. "These are frustrated, alienated individuals, loners who find a sense of community in their group."

Describing the downtrodden lives of Palestinians, he explained that the lack of opportunities for Palestinians leads them to feel frustrated and alienated. Post said it is the charismatic leaders of terrorists groups who recruit those people and direct their emotions toward a supposed "cause."

"The 'cause' is not the cause," Post said. "The cause and justification and rationalization for these frustrated, alienated individuals is to have that frustration pointed at an outside enemy."

He also discussed cultures that reward expressions of hatred in children, whose personalities are still developing. In a slideshow presentation, Post included many images of children, some as young as five, dressed in fatigues and wielding weapons.

"They are not being trained to be terrorists," he said. "They are trained to be revolutionaries."

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