The mental toll of violent imagery

But back to ISIS. The whole point of those videos is to terrify their viewers, and to nibble away at the mental health of people like those Marines and other enemies of the Islamic State. Jihadists often quote the scriptures that commend terrorizing certain enemies of Islam. They interpret verses to mean that terrorism in the defense of Islam is no vice, and that anything that scares the bejesus out of the infidel is a blessing. So, to be direct about it: Is this concern about the mental toll of these videos a sign that they were successful? Are the researchers traumatized by these videos casualties of war?

The wounds are real. (They can also be overstated. To have one’s dreams haunted is merely unpleasant, among the more benign effects of global jihadism.) But I also find that the ongoing trauma of these videos offers a paradoxical relief. After years of reporting on violence, one worries about numbness. All carnage, all the time — if you live like this too long, it can warp your view of the world.

Every time I saw an execution by ISIS, and felt my soul diminished, that feeling of diminution also reminded me that I still had a soul left to wound. And so the pain contains its own partial remedy: you remember that you are alive; that you still recoil at the acts that terrorists celebrate; and that the soul, unlike a severed limb or head, can regenerate, starfish-like, as long as the stump left behind still throbs.