Psychosocial Theory and Political Violence

This paper proposes the integration of psychosocial theory in the study of political violence in order to better understand the initiation of state terror. Drawing on theories of political leadership and political violence, this study examines the relationship between the personality of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte and the initiation of state terror in the aftermath of the military coup d etat carried out in Chile on September 11, 1973. To explore this issue, this paper focuses on the applicability of psychosocial theories of political leadership to the study of political violence, combining Erik Erikson s theory of psychosocial development with Ted Robert Gurr s preconditions for state terror in explaining the violent aftermath of the military coup. Finally, this research concludes that Pinochet s personality contained within it a potential for violence which when first manifest contributed to the onset of state terror after the 1973 coup