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By Peter Alan Olsson
Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008.
The World Trade Center bombings on September 11, 2001, heralded an entirely new era in the political, economic and social history of America. Masterminded by Osama Bin Laden, the attack signaled a changing world dynamic. America no longer could enjoy the relative sanctity and security as international terrorist forces had now detected its inherent vulnerabilities.
As the world reeled under the shock of this attack, politicians, journalists, economists, writers and others scrambled to make sense of what had happened. How could the planning of something so heinous and so vile go undetected by the strongest country in the world? What had happened to the nation's arsenal of secret intelligence and infiltrative powers? It is within this context that Peter Olsson, a psychoanalyst who has immersed himself in the study of such matters, examines Bin Laden whose messianic appeal, worldwide, launched Al Qaeda, as a sinister and demonic force. Their terrorist activities now infiltrate and reverberate around the world with disastrous outcomes.
Olsson's task is a monumental one. With no direct access to his protagonist, Bin Laden, he relies on the works of other journalists and writers who have had either directly interviewed Osama or others who know him well (most notably the journalist Peter Bergen and Jessica Stern). Olsson's psychoanalytic endeavor derives its theoretical and clinical roots from a growing tradition within the analytic community, of who, Vamik Volkan, an internationally renowned psychoanalyst, serves as Olsson's mentor and guide. Olsson, is repulsed (yet mesmerized) by Bin Laden's ability to mobilize young people worldwide to carry out deathly acts of violence. The book, “Cult of Osama”, is a culmination of Olsson's analysis of these powers, as he methodically examines and analyzes the mind of a man who remains elusive, deadly and destructive to the Western way of life.
The book has three part