A psychoanalytic exploration of media exposure to terrorism intrapyschic correlates of adult resilience to the Bali bombing

This thesis explored the utility of psychoanalytic object relations theory as a framework for understanding the intrapsychic processes that predicate adult resilience following exposure in the media to a large-scale terrorist attack. Little, if anything, is known about how people respond to media coverage of a large-scale terrorist attack when they reside in a different country from where a terrorist attack occurred, but their nationality is highly represented in the directly exposed group. The Bali bombing on October 12, 2002 was investigated as an exemplar of this exposure type in the Australian population. More than two thirds of the dead and injured in the bombing were Australian citizens, and the event attracted national grief and mourning (Raphael, 2005).