Synopses & Reviews
An intellectual and cultural history of the encounter between psychology and fascism,
The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind draws on neglected archive sources in Britain and the US, as well as literature, film, legal testimony, letters and memoirs, to map the rise and fall of psychoanalytic and psychiatric explanations of the Third Reich, highlighting the clinical ambition to transform mysterious "Nazi monsters" into plausible, individual "case studies."
Daniel Pick brings both the skills of the historian and the trained psychoanalyst to weave together the story of clinical encounters with leading Nazis and the Allies' broader interpretations of the Nazi high command and the mentality of the wider German public. Following the bizarre capture of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in 1941, leading British psychiatrists (especially Dr. Henry Dicks) assessed their new charge, in an attempt to understand both the man himself and the psychological bases of his Nazi convictions. Around the same time, Pick reveals, a similar team of American officers (notably Walter Langer) working for the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, were engaged in an attempt to understand Hitler's personality from afar, using the theories and techniques of Sigmund Freud. Pick then weaves together these Allied attempts to understand Hess and Hitler with the wider attempt to understand the pathology of Nazism and its hold over the German people.
Pick asks what such psychoanalytical and psychiatric investigations set out to do, showing how Freud's famous "talking cure" was harnessed to the particular needs of military intelligence during the war and the post-war reconstruction period. Looking beyond this, he also shows just how deeply post-war Western understandings of how minds work and groups operate were influenced by these wartime attempts to interpret the psychopathology of Nazism.
Review
"[A] story that needs telling...Historians of this period can read this valuable work to uncover a different perspective on the Nazi leader, and psychologists and psychoanalysts will be pleased to discover how much their work was valued during some of the darkest days in the 20th century." --PsycCRITIQUES
Review
"Pick has contributed an important chapter to the still-unfinished history of the psychoanalytic encounter with politics." --History of the Human Sciences
"[A] story that needs telling...Historians of this period can read this valuable work to uncover a different perspective on the Nazi leader, and psychologists and psychoanalysts will be pleased to discover how much their work was valued during some of the darkest days in the 20th century." --PsycCRITIQUES
"shows why psychoanalytic concepts, with their focus on the irrational roots of behavior, unconscious desires and fantasies, and the hysterical emotions Hitler elicited from Germans, were so persuasive to contemporaries trying to understand the power of Nazism" --Publishers Weekly
This is a terrific book. ... Soberly and clearly written... profoundly illuminating... 'this is the best book we have on one of the most illuminating encounters in twentieth century history and it deserves a wide audience.' --Prof Eli Zaretsky, Jewish Quarterly
"Remarkable, richly informative, and profound. This thought-provoking work marks a major contribution to understanding this very complex period. Highly recommended." -CHOICE
"A superb new book ... Pick, a distinguished historian of admirable breadth as well as a psychoanalyst, is the ideal author of such a study. His treatment of psychoanalysis is both historically framed and theoretically nuanced." --Professor Paul Lerner, Times
LiterarySupplement
Review
"For those interested in the way in which views and understanding of the Nazi experience have changed over time, this work is a helpful source from a perspective that is rare in current historiography." --The Historian
"A superb new book ... Pick, a distinguished historian of admirable breadth as well as a psychoanalyst, is the ideal author of such a study. His treatment of psychoanalysis is both historically framed and theoretically nuanced." --Professor Paul Lerner, Times Literary Supplement
Synopsis
The story of how psychoanalysis was used in the war against Nazi Germany - in the crucial quest to understand the Nazi mind.
Daniel Pick brings both the skills of the historian and the trained psychoanalyst to weave together the story of clinical encounters with leading Nazis and the Allies' broader interpretations of the Nazi high command and the mentality of the wider German public who supported them.
Following the bizarre capture of Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in 1941, Pick follows closely the story of how leading British psychiatrists assessed their new charge, in an attempt to understand both the man himself and the psychological bases of his Nazi convictions. At the same time, he uncovers the story of how a team of American officers working for the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, were engaged in an attempt to understand Hitler's personality from afar, using the theories and techniques of Sigmund Freud.
Drawing upon a large cache of archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Pick asks what such psychoanalytical and psychiatric investigations set out to do, showing how Freud's famous 'talking cure' was harnessed to the particular needs of military intelligence during the war and the task of post-war reconstruction that followed. Looking beyond this, he then shows just how deeply post-war Western understandings of how minds work and groups operate were influenced by these wartime attempts to interpret the pychopathology of Nazism.
About the Author
Daniel Pick is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. An editor of History Workshop Journal, he is also a practising psychoanalyst and a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is the author of numerous works on European cultural history, including
Svengali's Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture and, most recently,
Rome or Death: The Obsessions of General Garibaldi, and he is currently preparing the volume on Psychoanalysis for the
Very Short Introductions series.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Analysts and Nazis
3. 'The Deputy Madman'
4. Getting Through to Hess
5. Madness and Politics
6. The OSS
7. Hitler's Mind
8. So Plainly Mad?
9. Nuremberg: Conspiracy and Confession
10. Sane Features
11. Legacies
12. Afterword
Appendices
Notes
Index