Book Review: In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror

• Published date: 01 September 2006
• Author: Jacob Goldstein
• Date: 01 September 2006
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016806292915
• Subject Matter: Articles

Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2002). In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology

of Terror. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

DOI: 10.1177/0734016806292915

In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror includes (a) an exposition of the terror

management theory (TMT), which was developed by the authors partly under the influence

of psychoanalytic, neopsychoanalytic, and existential sources (e.g., Freud, Fromm, Rank,

Bowlby,Yalom, Becker) and which attributed a wide range of psychological phenomena to

distinctly human awareness of inevitability of one’s death and to defenses against the ter-

ror stemming from such awareness; (b) a summary of a large body of experimental data

accumulated by the authors and others in the course of testing propositions derived from

TMT; (c) an analysis—in light of TMT—of some of the causes and some of the effects

of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on major U.S. targets; and (d) a more general

treatment—also in light of TMT—of the psychology of terrorism and of steps that might

be taken to minimize the motivation for terrorist activity and to mitigate the danger of fur-

ther terrorist attacks. The authors are explicit in noting that they “did not attempt to com-

prehensively present other social, psychological, clinical, political science, or sociological

viewpoints pertaining to these matters” (p. x), but they do maintain—justifiably in my

judgment—that their contribution “while not sufficient to completely understand 9/11 and

its consequences, is a necessary component of any adequate account of these events” (p. x).

In their exposition of TMT, the authors state that “at the most fundamental level, cultures

allow people to control the ever-present potential terror of death by convincing them that

they are beings of enduring significance living in a meaningful reality” (p. 16); that “to

maintain psychological equanimilty throughout their lives, people must maintain . . . faith

in a culturally derived worldview that imbues reality with order, stability, meaning, and per-

manence” as well as a “belief that one is a significant contributor to meaningful reality”

(p. 16); and that “all cultural world views serve an important function by providing a sense

of meaning and a recipe for attaining either symbolic or literal immorality” (p. 22).

Like many others—including Erich Fromm, whom they cite on this issue—the authors

reject the notions that human cruelty and destructiveness can be explained in terms of

heredity. Instead, they offer a twofold explanation based on TMT, according to which

(a) “if culturally defined beliefs about reality serve a fundamentally death-denying func-

tion, the mere existence of people with alternative conceptions of reality is psychologically

problematic (p. 29) and (b) “no culture can ever completely eradicate the terror of the

awareness of death” and “consequently there is always residual anxiety projected into

something, typically a group of individuals outside the culture who serve as scapegoats:

socially designated surrogates of evil” (p. 30).

The authors are experimental psychologists, and many of the predictions derived from

TMT have been verified by them and/or by others in experimental studies—often with

ample replications and procedures intended to rule out alternative interpretations. Although

many of these studies have been done in the United States, some of the replications have

been done in other countries.

In line with what might be expected on the basis of some of the foregoing, one of the

major independent variables manipulated in these experiments involves what the authors

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