Political terrorists: dangers of diagnosis and an alternative to the psychopathology model.

The coverage of political terrorism in the press and popular journals has promoted a view of this phenomena as symptomatic of psychopathology. Although professionally trained behavioral scientists rarely participate in such armchair diagnoses, other observers have often contributed to this psychopathology model. But this view of political terrorism not only rests on questionable methodological grounds, its promulgation may dangerously obscure the sources and nature of this increasingly important phenomena.