AN ASSASSIN TYPOLOGY
Type I - Assassins view their acts as a probable sacrifice of
self for a political ideal. They are fully cognizant and
accepting of the meaning, implications and personal consequences
of their acts. Inherently personal motives, such as a neurotic
need for recognition, are secondary to their primary political
purpose. Type I's may or may not attempt to escape, but the
sacrificial them that characterizes their zeal and commitment
suggests that capture, like death, is an acceptable, if not
preferred, risk. Emotional distortion is present only to the
extent that political ideals supersede survival instincts. If
captured, the Type I does not recant on his or her motivating
principles or seek clemency or personal publicity. Unlike Types
II, III, and IV, their extremism is rational, selfless,
principled and without perversity.
Type II - Assassins are persons with overwhelming and aggressive
egocentric needs for acceptance, recognition and status. There
is none of the cognitive distortion associated with psychoses.
Emotionally they are characterized by moderately high levels of
reality-based anxiety that exerts a strong influence on their
behavior. Without delusion, they fully appreciate and accept the
personal consequences of their acts. The primary characteristic
they share is called a "political" personality. That is, a
personality which is inclined to project personal motives on
public objects and rationalize them in terms of some larger
public interest. Such persons seek power in order to compensate
for low estimates of self are most frequently a result of a
deprivation of love and affection in their personal lives. Thus
there are always significant others in the personal lives of Type
II subjects. Under these circumstances, in every instance, the
exercise of power in a public manner generates the attention that
had been denied in the past. In some cases, the act may serve to
place the burden of guilt on those persons in their disturbed
personal lives who have denied or rejected them. Assassins of
this type anticipate capture or death and prepare for it. The
neurotic Type II assassin is an anxious, emotional and ultimately
depressed person who is primarily concerned with her/his personal
problems and frustrations and only secondarily with causes or
ideals.
Type III - Assassins are either psycho-paths or socio-paths who
believe that the condition of their lives is so intolerably
meaningless and without purpose that destruction of society and
themselves is desirable for its own sake. Unlike ordinary
psychopaths whose rage is usually directed at specific segments
of society, this type of killer strikes at persons who personify
the majority, or those who represent a cross-section rather than
any particular segment. Type III subjects possess no positive
political values and are belligerently contemptuous of morality
and social convention. The amorphous rage and perversity that
characterizes the lives of these persons may finally take form in
some extreme act like suicide, mass murder, or assassination; but
in the case of assassination, there is no political motive.
Except for their perverse anger, they are emotionally dormant;
the pendulum swings of emotion associated with some psychoses are
absent. They also differ from Type I assassins in that they are
rational in a negative and perverse Dostoyevskian sense and
thoughtfully aware of their motives and the consequences of their
acts. Feeling neither joy nor sadness and indifferent to death,
they are unable to relate to others. Thus, unlike Type II's,
there are no significant others in their empty lives. The Type
III subject accurately perceives reality but is limited in his
capacity to respond to it emotionally. He is not someone who has
lost his reason, rather someone who has lost everything but his
reason.
Type IV - Assassins are characterized by severe emotional and
cognitive distortion that is expressed in hallucinations and
delusions of persecution and/or grandeur. Their contact with
reality is so tenuous that they are usually unable to grasp the
significance of their actions or understand the response of
others to them. Their acts are mystically or divinely inspired.
They are simply irrational or insane.
Source - James W. Clarke, American Assassins: The Darker Side of
Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, l982. pp. 14-17.