Trauma, Crisis and Radicalization: A Crisis-Psychological Interpretation of Radicalization and Its Potential Applications in Investigative Support

Abstract

Aim: In connection with individual radicalization, the literature presents a wide range of theories and models that seek, in a multidisciplinary manner, to uncover the key pillars of this complex process. Multidisciplinary approaches tend to draw heavily on psychological explanations, attempting to incorporate knowledge from both basic and applied fields of psychology in describing the psychodynamics of radicalization. It is therefore unsuprising that major insights from social, personality, developmental, clinical, and criminal psychology have become integral parts of such descriptions. However, it appears that another applied field of psychology may also be relevant to explaining radicalization – namely, crisis psychology. A review of the narrative accounts of offenders categorized as lone actors reveals that their individual radicalization processes were strongly influenced by personal traumas experienced throughout their lives – traumas they were unable to cope with effectively or to internalize adaptively within their personalities. This observation raises the possibility that inadequate, maladaptive crisis management and coping mechanisms may also play a role in the development of individual radicalization. For this reason, the present paper seeks to explore and interpret the process of radicalization from the perspective of crisis psychology.
Methodology: In this article, I employ a literature review and brief case studies to illustrate the crisis-psychological context of radicalization.
Findings: The importance of individual traumas is unquestionable. Every person encounters events in life that are experienced as traumatic; the outcomes and processing of these experiences may be either adaptive or maladaptive. Maladaptive coping, in psychological terms, not only perpetuates the effects of trauma but may also lead to negative distortions in personality, contributing to the development and consolidation of severe mental and personality disorders. Case analyses likewise indicate that lone-actor perpetrators experienced multiple traumatic events throughout their lives, the maladaptive processing of which substantially contributed to the emergence of extremist ideologies and the progression of radicalization.
Value: Although this article provides only an overarching overview, addressing the essential elements of the crisis-psychological interpretation of radicalization, it is nonetheless evident that this approach offers a new perspective on the analysis of radicalization. The case studies likewise support the assumption that a relationship can be identified between radicalization and individual trauma and crisis—a connection that warrants deeper examination and more focused analytical attention.