Dying Together: Towards a Psychoanalytic Understanding of Political Self-Sacrifice
The paper delineates a conceptual framework by which a historical-
social phenomenon such as suicide terrorism could be understood in
terms of its psychological meaning. It offers few psychoanalytically
informed observations on the role of trauma and on the psychic
dynamics behind the use of self-sacrifice as a political weapon, and on
the traumatic effects that self-sacrifice as a particular form of social
violence may have on those that are not directly involved in it. Clinical
material from the analysis of two Israeli patients during a recent wave
of suicide attacks in Israel is used to illustrate the argument.