Mick Hartley

The Pope speaks out:

Pope Francis has warned that a recent wave of jihadist attacks in Europe is proof that "the world is at war".

Except he doesn't actually talk of "jihadist attacks", because – of course – none of this has anything to do with religion:

However, he stressed he did not mean a war of religions, but rather a conflict over "interests, money, resources"….

"The word we hear a lot is insecurity, but the real word is war," the pontiff said.

"We must not be afraid to say the truth, the world is at war because it has lost peace.

Can't argue with that.

"When I speak of war I speak of wars over interests, money, resources, not religion. All religions want peace, it's the others who want war," Pope Francis added.

Ah yes.

We can add the Pope's helpful comments to those of the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner, who asks, What drives individuals to commit mass killings?

With four attacks in southern Germany coming shortly after the mass murder of 84 people in Nice, counter-terrorism officials are struggling to detect a common thread. Is there a single, defining feature to these attacks that could offer clues on how to prevent more of them from happening?

What on earth could it be? Luckily there's a psychoanalyst at hand, to help us out. And not just an ordinary psychoanalyst – this one's a forensic psychoanalyst.

Peter Aylward, who spent much of his career as a detective in the Metropolitan Police, then later as a forensic psychoanalyst at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, says it is possible to find a common thread in the past history of murderers. He believes the clues are all in their dysfunctional backgrounds.

"It is a psychiatric problem," he says, "and such planning [as the Nice or Munich attacks] indicates a disordered personality. With such premeditation there is a desire to enact a form of revenge, and with such intent on causing major terror."

So why do we only see such a relatively small number of killing sprees, compared with the large number of people who suffer from psychiatric disorders and never go on to harm anyone?

"With a detailed look at the history of those perpetrators," says Mr Aylward, "what we see is a sort of combination-lock of numbers that if arranged in the right sequence then the lock snaps open and a murderous attack takes place."

He says far more work needs to be done to identify the signs leading up to such events before they happen.

All of this poses a major problem for US and European governments and intelligence agencies trying to stop the next mass killing. Mental health is not usually in their remit….

What we need, clearly, are more forensic psychoanalysts.