The Tamerlan Tsarnaev case: The nexus of psychopathology and ideology in a lone actor terrorist.

Abstract

This is a psychoanalytic case study of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the terrorist who bombed the Boston Marathon in April, 2013, with the help of his younger brother. The focus is upon the nexus between his psychopathology and ideology, in this particular case an arguable paranoid and psychotic disorder and his growing commitment to radical Islam, culminating in his identification as a jihadist warrior and a renunciation of Western ideals. The theoretical approach is both object relations and developmental, with empirical reliance on both primary and secondary source material, including the testimony of those within his family and social network at his brother’s trial. The nexus of psychopathology and ideology in this case is the degree to which conspiratorial belief systems blaming, among others, an international Jewish conspiracy and a covert CIA program—which he found in both the virtual (Internet) and terrestrial (travel to Dagestan) worlds—helped alleviate the anxiety of a decompensating mind.