My advice about
this book is: Read It Now. At a time when military action against Iraq looms
large on the horizon, and ‘war on terrorism’ appears to inflame all sorts of
fast and simple-minded opinions on whom the ‘real bad guys’ are, this book
stands out for its lucid and clear-headed analysis of the emotions stirred up
by the 9/11 attacks, both from the point of view of those who planned and perpetrated
these attacks and those who (directly or indirectly) suffered them. More
boldly, the authors put forward their own view of how to build constructive
solutions to conflicts in which violent protest easily gathers sympathizers
(namely, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), while arguing for ways in which the
appeal of terrorist action can be greatly diminished and possibly even
eliminated – all the while without any need for military campaigns of arguable
effectiveness. It also suggests and advises mental health practitioners and
social workers on concrete measures to deal with the psychological effects
likely to follow the attacks, and how each one of us (whether American or more
generally, a citizen of the Western World) can deal with this brutal reminder
of life’s fragility (see especially chapters 5 and 6). In others words, this is
a timely book that speaks to all – politicians, researchers, businessmen and
layman – who are looking for more than a knee-jerk reflection on the events
surrounding 9/11.

A project this
ambitious will no doubt command disagreement from some of its readers, if not
for all of its claims then certainly for a few of them. The authors’ analysis
of the reactions to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon is
based on what they call Terror Management Theory (TMT), a broad psychological
model which explains prejudice and ethnic conflict as the result of human
beings’ need for ‘death-denying cultural constructions’. Less obscurely, TMT
posits that our uniquely human awareness of our own mortality opens the
possibility of ‘overwhelming terror’ that we then try to circumvent via the
construction and maintenance of a system of beliefs (i.e., culture) that
assures each of us a place of enduring value in a world of assured meaning.
It’s clear enough, however, that the diversity of existing cultures means that
not all belief systems can be ‘right’ and, consequently, the mere existence of
different cultures threatens to undermine the validity of one’s own illusions
of immortality. Most of us deal with this threat by trying to convince
others to adopt our beliefs, by clinging harder to our views and derogating
theirs or, in more extreme cases, by excluding those who are different and even
exterminating them. The authors draw empirical support for the claims of TMT
from a significant number of studies showing that reminders of death produce
increased defence of one’s own cultural allegiances with a concomitant greater
affection for those who uphold similar beliefs and greater hostility to
different others (see in particular chapters 3 and 4). It is precisely under
the umbrella of this theoretical framework that the authors understand
Americans’ proximal and distal reactions to the 9/11 attacks, and dig at the
underpinnings of the hatred that is directed by some Islamic fundamentalist
groups against Western civilization and the United States in particular. With
regard to this later aspect, the idea is that the only-too-understandable need
of the Arab world to hold on to its own cultural defensive shield against
existential fears is being exaggerated by a host of historical, political and
economic factors that work together to convey the impression to some in the
Islamic world that nothing short of elimination can diminish the threat posed
by the Western worldview.

As I’ve said before, it is very likely that some readers will take
issue with at least a few of the tenets espoused by TMT. Not only do the
authors affiliate themselves with a trend not-so-popular-these-days for broad
theories of motives affecting social behaviour (typically, researchers complain
that such theories are very hard to evaluate empirically), their suggested
measures to help solve existing ethnic conflicts and counter the intolerance
and fundamentalism of certain groups (for let us not forget that fundamentalist
thinking also plagues certain factions of contemporary Christianity and
Orthodox Judaism) might seem somewhat naïve or impossibly appeasing. Apart from
recommending attentive reading of the book, it should be said on behalf of the
authors that they themselves ask for their analysis to be supplemented by
foreign policy experts, historians, psychologists of all makes and any other
relevant branch of academia. What’s more, the clarity of exposition, the careful
structure of the argumentation and the rigour of analysis, to my mind, make
this book a prime example of the sort of integrated approach we need to events
like the 9/11 and how academic (in this case, social) psychology can educate
our views and policies.

© 2003 Isabel Gois

Isabel Gois is a
PhD student at King’s College London working on Consciousness. Her research
interests include Philosophy of Mind, Neuropsychology, and Mental Disorder. She
has articles published on Emotions, Computationalism, and Consciousness.

Categories: Psychology, Ethics