International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 62

International Journal on Criminology
Suicide Attacks, a Psychological Method
Let us return to the “suicide attack.” To understand the meaning of this type of
act, let us listen to the direct witnesses and try to imagine the event. Suicide attacks
evoke the key words: explode, blow up, specifically to blow oneself up, surprise,
destroy in destroying oneself; strike spectacularly one’s surroundings, defy, stun,
provoke a thousand questions in the mind. The crucial idea being to “blow oneself
up by blowing up one’s surroundings. This is what appears first in the mind when we
imagine a suicide attack. In thought and within the limits of reason, let us accompany
the suicide attacker to guess his or her thoughts in the moments preceding the act.
What does he or she hope for? What irresistible psychic force drives this person to
blow him- or herself up? And could we experience the same mental disposition?
(There is the question).
For the suicide attacker, the act envisaged and executed makes one truth explode forth;
it challenges all moral, ethical, and especially psychological rules; and it brutally
undoes solid ties to the impulse to live. It reveals his or her unique truth, even for the
virtual family or the group, which symbolically replace the real family. Despite their
proximity, the elements of the group each have their own history.
In speaking of the individuals who join Daesh, Olivier Roy esteems that they
“already entered into dissidence and are seeking a cause, a label, a grand narrative to
sign with the bloody signature of their personal revolt.” He adds that “by breaking
with their families, the ‘jihadists’ are also in the margins of the Muslim community:
they almost never have a past of piety and religious practice; on the contrary, the
violence to which they adhere is modern. They kill like mass killers do in America or
Breivik in Norway, in a cold and calm manner. In Syria, they only make war: none
of them is integrated or interested in civil society. They have no integration in the
Muslim societies that they claim to defend.” 57 They belong to Salafism, an “individual
Islam,” rejecting the idea of culture, where one builds oneself alone.
That said, the choice of this ultimate solution refers to the situation before the
suicidal act of which the real and symbolic objective is to loosen the psychological
vice. In the subject’s mind, this situation excludes any conventional expression. To
understand the situation of the subject before the act, we can compare two forms of
suicide.
“Ordinary” Suicide and Suicide Attacks
Suicide attacks are usually considered according to the interpretative categories
used for the psychology of suicidal people: in both cases, the person uses his or her
body and life to attempt to explain a complex emotional state. The act is thus raised
to the level of language or at least symbolic expression. The suicidal person wants to
57
Article published in the newspaper Le Monde, Tuesday, March 24, 2015.
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