Editor's Introduction: Terrorism

The old parable of the glass being half-empty or half-full comes to mind when one contrasts the current psychoanalytic fervor towards understanding terrorism (Covington et al., 2002; Coates et al, 2003; Tylim, 2003; Varvin and Volkan, 2003) with the profession's silence on the Serbian massacres, the Rwandan genocide, the American pillage of Iraq, and the ongoing bloodshed in Sudan. Cynics amongst us will discern patterns of sinister provincialism and prejudice here. Optimists will celebrate that at least some new knowledge is being created in the realm of applied psychoanalysis. The realist, ensconced in Klein's (1937) “depressive position” will see both viewpoints, bear the pain, and, like Sisyphus, maintain hope and go on with well-intentioned praxis.

It is with tempered optimism and humility, therefore, that we offer the review of two books on terrorism here. The considerable difficulties in defining the term “terrorism” (Akhtar, 1999) notwithstanding, the fact is that the world has undergone a major transformation in the face of the activities of the Irish Republican Army in England and Ireland, the Shining Path Guerillas in Peru, the Tamil Liberation Tigers in Sri Lanka and southern parts of India, and, most recently, the devastating rise of Al-Q'aeda throughout the Islamic world. No place is safe any more. Annihilation anxiety is rampant and paranoia is widespread. As more and more religious and political fuel is poured on these diabolical fires, a hopeless dialectics of “war against terrorism” sets in. Violence begets violence and the cycle goes on.

The books under review here address all this and more. The first book is September 11: Trauma and Human Bonds, edited by Susan Coates and colleagues, and is reviewed by the Los Angeles-based psychoanalyst, Sharon Zalusky. The second, a product of the International Psychoanalytic Association's Working Group on Terror and Terrorism, is titled Violence or Dialogue? Psychoanalytic Insights and Terror and Terrorism. It i