On September 11, 2001, the world looked to New York. Three groups of suicide bombers crashed several planes in various parts of the United States and forever changed the course of history. On the 11th anniversary of that tragic event, we interviewed Jesús Sánchez Gómez, doctor in criminology and Investigator in Terrorism Analysis, whose methods of analysis of terrorist psychology go beyond a psychological study of the subjects, but also focus on the clinical appearance of people. In fact, it has published the “Criminology Clinic Manual: Criminal Danger Profile” specifically designed to create profiles of dangerous people and where, as a teaching example, the dangerousness profiles of the jihadists of 11-M are included.
Very Interesting: In recent years, terrorism has become a true global plague. Why? Is there a psychological reason?
Terrorism, in general, starts from the premise, in its design, of seeking long-term psychological effects, beyond the immediate victims of the terrorist attack.
From this perspective, political violence seeks to generate instability from the media impact, being here where we find the use, by these associations, of relatively modern instruments, which serve as loudspeakers to generate fear in the population and make your political claim heard. I am referring to the media, which leads us to a magnified appreciation of terrorism in any of its aspects, be it nationalist or religious or merely mercenary and with a strictly economic purpose.
There are not so many terrorist organizations in existence, but it is true that the means and forms they use, with well-used media propaganda and with a devastating and indiscriminate effect on their criminal outcome, generate in people a state of sufficient anxiety to keep them on their toes a situation that, despite being objectively rare, is shocking and cruel enough to achieve its goal of terror.
However, the discourses that they handle as maxims and utopians make them remain unsolvable over time, unifying the group by its idility, and this is where different aspects come into play, when configuring the paradigm of the terrorist group; the psychological, to which the question refers, and another, in my opinion very important, the sociological.
Regarding the psychological, these subjects participate in an inimidable personality construct, so that with an egocentric appreciation of their own acts and beliefs, and loaded, in turn, with “their truth”, they fear neither punishment nor reproach. Although this does not mean that they present a deficit or psychological pathology, their personality simply places them in a position prone to take the plunge and commit the criminal act.
So far, anyone can be in a position to defend an idea, no matter how obsessive it may be. However, that step to the act to commit the crime requires a harmful aspect of the personality, capable of passing the aggressive threshold that determines the commission of the act.
On the other hand, already with a psychological predisposition to carry out the aggression, the way in which it could be committed, regarding the affective indifference with the victim, comes from another personality trait that, at its extreme, we all know with the qualification of psychopath, although these, in absolute numbers, are scarce.
I have left for the end of this question another aspect, related to the psychological construct of the subject, which is nourished by sociological considerations.
The creation of personality is gestated, with a preeminent character, by social and environmental influences. So the family, the peer group and the situational influences determine a personality and a behavior.
Thus, the socializing agents of the distant and immediate environment, with respect to culture, the former, and group dynamics, with respect to the latter, will position the subject in the midst of beliefs, in which people from their environment will participate.
In a certain instance, the terrorist will participate in a group, and will want to participate in it, adopting a perverse role; the subject psychologically needs to be part of a group with certain socializing ideas. The group, in turn, demands from each of its members a certain behavior and assumption of principles to unite it, for which it demands an attitude and an activity that the individual in turn is willing to accept in order not to be rejected. of the same, thus entering a vicious spiral whose first premise to break it must be the disintegration of said group and the separation of the subjects in order to suspend harmful influences.
In short, we see how terrorist behaviors are aimed at influencing the psychology of the citizen, which they need to reach through fear, using the communication channels that exist and that are available to them, that is: the internet, press, radio. and television, acting in such a way that the demands they make reach the greater the population the better, causing them the burden of the possibility of being victims of an uncertain and serious event.
Very interesting:Television, through movies and series, has brought criminology and the importance of knowing the psychology of murderers to the public. Is it correctly shown what is the work of these professionals? What are the most common failures?
Television, like other media, come to focus on aspects derived from a sick personality originating from psychosis such as schizophrenia (Psychosis movie) or personalities of great affective indifference, who do not get sick, such as psychopaths (film El Silencio de the Lambs), the fictional investigator trying to solve and learn about the personality exclusively through an interview with the offender.
In reality, investigators who make profiles approach the knowledge of the offender from an almost exclusively psychological scientific field, as we see in the movies, with the exception of agencies such as the FBI or the CIA, which study the personality more broadly, in an interdisciplinary way, that is, they see the personality built with factors that go beyond psychology. Even so, despite being the majority of films and series of North American production, the biggest failure is to refer to the study of the offender’s personality, as I said before, without showing how other areas of scientific knowledge, such as science, fit into their research. psychiatry or sociology, among others, which presents viewers of the film with a single piece of real research.
Likewise, when the films are presented, we observe how the investigator conducts the interview with the offender spontaneously, when in reality there is a phase of exhaustive, intense and meticulous preparation of the questions to be asked.
In the same way, in the films, they give us an appreciation of the investigation carried out almost in a one-person way, something very far from the procedure, which is always the result of a very deep work of a team of researchers.
Very interesting:Do you think there will come a day when, like in the Minority Report movie, we can anticipate crime?
The behavior of people, despite being the consequence of a certain way of being, the result of the personality of each individual, which is built in the first years of life, is not entirely predictable, since it is influenced by very diverse reasons derived, among others, from experiences, studies, beliefs or pathologies. Circumstances that will make a subject, at a given moment, make one decision or another, both of which can be totally opposite.
In this sense, the film Minority Report does not value the behavior of the person as something the result of experiences and continuous learning, it denies free will and the ability of the subject to adopt the behavior that he considers appropriate to each situation as a result of his own maturity . In turn, each person can modify their body scheme throughout life. The crime will not be committed in the same way if you have an athletic body as if you have morbid obesity. Just as the crime will not be committed in the same way when you have a healthy biology as when you have pathologies. For example, behavior can be determined by hormonal alterations that influence the pituitary gland, which is located below the hypothalamus, a gland that participates in the synthesis process of human behavior by being linked to reasoning, emotions and can be stimulated by the production of hormones responsible for aggressive behavior (testosterone, among others).
As we can see, criminal behavior is not only influenced by psychology or socialization processes but, in turn, biological aspects may determine behavior. For this reason, the study of other areas of scientific knowledge is essential to understand the reason for criminal behavior, which may, where appropriate, be treated from a medical paradigm.
The future behavior of each person can be something intuitive but in no case can there be certainty.
What is special about the methodology that you apply in your research?
The clinical criminological method starts from understanding the subject as a unique entity, with a personality created through a process of socialization, but in continuous evolution and capable of being altered by very different factors. For these reasons, unlike other researchers, I understand that the study of criminal personality requires, for the preparation of its profile, a study that transcends the merely psychological. Thus, the investigation of the continuous processes of socialization and the influences that the environment exerts on the subject, the biological, psychiatric or medical alterations, are necessary to, in a global way, understand the behavior at a specific moment.
After the analysis and diagnosis of the criminal dangerousness profile, the clinical method allows, in addition to approaching the reason for a behavior, to be able to carry out a certain prospecting and induce a prognosis trying to foresee what will happen. Once this is done, it will be possible, to a large extent, to be able to treat the subject’s personality, known more globally than from a psychological perspective, from those harmful aspects that have determined their behavior.
At another time, the method that we have been describing could be the basis for the creation of protocols that, despite not being closed and being able to be modified as information is gathered, will surely become a valid and usable tool to increase the crime prevention through early identification.
You analyze aspects of different fields: psychology, medicine, biology, … Is a terrorist born or made? Or put another way, what role does genetics play? Are there people predisposed to commit crimes?
With the exception of psychopaths, who are born lacking affective capacity, hence it is not a disease, but a deficit, for which they will have a behavior unable to empathize with other people throughout their life and that will influence their relationships producing pain, whether in the family, professional or strictly criminal sphere (terrorist or common), the criminal personality is generated, to a large extent, by social influences, although effectively influenced by genetic and biochemical factors yet to be determined since, in some Aspects, research in this regard is not conclusive, although it has been shown that the biological factors that affect the individual predispose their behavior, both altruistic and harmful.
The question, in this sense, must be answered by saying that the offender, in general, is made from socializing relationships, influenced in certain cases by biological considerations, with the exception of the psychopaths, referred to above, who given their inability to have affection place themselves in a preeminent position to carry out criminal acts of any kind.
Culture, indoctrination and group dynamics seem to be the determining elements for an individual, with a biological predisposition, to become part of a terrorist organization.
Based on your research, do you think policing methodologies should be changed? Could attacks, such as 9/11 or March 11, have been prevented by knowing more about the way of thinking of the terrorists?
As far as I know, the investigations of the police forces and intelligence agencies consider the study of the subject through the psychological profile, a circumstance that clearly limits the knowledge of the individual.
If, on the one hand, the police forces dedicate resources to information tasks and, on the other, the intelligence agencies are dedicated to the analysis of information in order to generate knowledge, we observe how both institutions are dedicated to fields that, even though they seem the same, are different but complementary.
The excellent work carried out by the police forces searching, detecting and intervening in circumstances that could disturb citizen security is scarce, hence the work of the intelligence agencies is directed to elaborate the information to detect in advance possible risks for the security of nations, so that, by generating knowledge, facts can be understood and valued and their evolution predicted.
There is no doubt that something has gone wrong in the information services of the security forces and something has gone wrong in the information agencies when, as far as we know, the attacks could not be prevented. However, you have to be fair with them, one thing is not knowing the danger, which was surely known, and another is not being able to detect when and how they will carry out the criminal act. Both institutions are made up of people, not fortune-tellers, and no matter how hard they dedicate themselves, with the great professionalism that they show every day, terrorist acts are the result of strategies of people who also think.
Despite what has been said, the study of the criminal dangerousness profile of the subjects from whom information is obtained, as well as the study of criminogenic contexts in a multidisciplinary manner, would surely allow a step forward in the ability to prospect those circumstances that could alter national order or security.
