| The world is full of new horrors and
there's no place to hide. Who says so? Disaster psychologists, for a start. They
are the people who take in the big picture of our collective reactions to
human-created disaster, the ways these reactions are caused, and our coping
mechanisms. And research into disaster psychology is growing fast. Among the big issues being addressed by these researchers are understanding the terrorists' weapons, assessing the full impact of terrorism—and, crucially, working out which psychological approaches actually work. It's a deeply controversial area. Take the work of Dennis Embry as an example. He argues that we have overlooked the obvious: the purpose of terrorism is to create terror. This works best "if the very symbols of everyday life become conditioned fear and anxiety stimulant". The top targets will be the most symbolic of a nation's daily life, preferably served up for prime-time television. Crashing planes from United and American Airlines into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon met those objectives all too perfectly. After the attacks, people stopped flying. Why? Not because they had made a rational risk assessment but because the mere thought of flying made their palms sweat. From terrorism to rail crashes, counseling and "debriefing" (盘问) are the standard response to help those caught up in disasters. But there are growing doubts about their effectiveness. What might be going wrong? Debriefing focuses on getting people to talk through the trauma (损伤) and its emotional consequences soon after the incident. Could it be that some people are better by distancing themselves from what happened, rather than retelling it? If disaster psychologists want to find better ways to help, they'll have to win the race between our understanding of human psychology and the terrorists'. |