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Construing a “Perfect Knight”: A Personal Construct Investigation of Mass Murder

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10720537.2013.846837

1521-0650

David A. Winter, Finn Tschudi,

Human Behavior and Motivation

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik emailed a compendium entitled, "2083: A Declaration of European Independence," to more than 1,000 addresses before bombing government buildings in Oslo and attacking a Labor Party youth camp, killing 77 people. This article adopts a credulous attitude and analyzes a personal section of his compendium from a personal construct psychology perspective, as if it were a self-characterization. Its aim is to understand further the construing processes of individuals who become "radicalized" or engage in acts of extreme violence, on the assumption that such understanding is a prerequisite for preventative and restorative strategies. The personal construct formulation of Breivik's construing and actions is compared with the analysis of terrorism by an historian, Roger Griffin.