ICYMI: Experts view radicalized individuals who incite violent attacks as misfits with ‘overvalued ideas’

More on radicalization:

But [Matthew] Logan said it would be a disservice to categorize him simply as a “jihadist.” Many radicalized individuals are misfits of society who cling obsessively to “overvalued ideas” as a way to elevate their sense of self, Logan said. They can just as easily be drawn to the cause of animal activism as the Islamic State narrative, he said.

“They’re not terrorists. They’re people with overvalued ideas jumping on a cause,” he said.

In a column published in the journal Violence and Gender, Logan wrote that while they may see themselves as rebels for a particular cause, “it should be understood that it is really not ‘the cause’ that moves them to violence,” but an underlying psychopathology, perhaps mixed with a bit of narcissism.

“These persons have idealized values, which have developed into such an overriding importance that they totally define the ‘self’ or identity of the individual,” he wrote.

Academics have used the concept of “overvalued ideas” to try to explain the actions of everyone from Ted Kaczynski (the “Unabomber”), the American mathematician who sent mail bombs as part of a campaign against technology, to people with anorexia nervosa, the eating disorder in which people starve themselves to achieve a desired body image.

Logan is quick to add, however, that having “overvalued ideas” should not diminish one’s culpability for a violent act.

Experts view radicalized individuals who incite violent attacks as misfits with ‘overvalued ideas’.