Pick, Daniel (Author)
Oxford University Press
Physical Details: 357 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English
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.
...MoreReview Linstrum, Erik (2013) Review of "The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts". History of the Human Sciences (pp. 151-155).
Review Antic, Ana (2014) Review of "The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts". History of Psychiatry (pp. 126-128).
Review Cantor, Geoffrey (2015) Review of "The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 528-529).
Review Zwigenberg, Ran (2015) Review of "The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts". Medical History (pp. 495-497).
Similar Citations
Article
Kurlander, Eric;
(2012)
Hitler's Monsters: The Occult Roots of Nazism and the Emergence of the Nazi “Supernatural Imaginary”
Book
Urwand, Ben;
(2013)
The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler
Article
Behrens, Peter J.;
(2009)
War, Sanity, and the Nazi Mind: The Last Passion of Joseph Jastrow
Book
Frosh, Stephen;
(2005)
Hate and the “Jewish Science”: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis
Article
Wittmann, Emily;
(2004)
To What Extent Were Ideas and Beliefs about Eugenics held in Nazi Germany Shared in Britain and the United States Prior to the Second World War?
Book
Weiss-Wendt, Anton;
Yeomans, Rory;
(2013)
Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938--1945
Thesis
Carney, Amy Beth;
(2010)
Victory in the Cradle: Fatherhood and the Family Community in the Nazi Schutzstaffel
Book
Ash, Mitchell G.;
(2010)
Psychoanalyse in totalitären und autoritären Regimes
Article
Schäfer, Daniel;
(2005)
Heil bei Hitler. Geschichte und Mißbrauch einer medizinischen Metapher
Article
Mandler, George;
(2002)
Psychologists and the National Socialist Access to Power
Book
Medawar, Jean;
Pyke, David;
(2001)
Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled By the Nazi Regime
Book
Ball, Philip;
(2014)
Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler
Book
David Zimmerman;
(2023)
Ensnared between Hitler and Stalin: Refugee Scientists in the USSR
Article
Hoffmann, Dieter;
(2005)
Between Autonomy and Accommodation: The German Physical Society during the Third Reich
Article
Cesareo, Roberto;
(2009)
La fisica durante il nazi-fascismo
Article
Mineau, André;
(2007)
Social Hygiene and the Holocaust
Book
Hoffmann, Dieter;
Walker, Mark;
(2011)
“Fremde” Wissenschaftler im Dritten Reich: die Debye-Affäre im Kontext
Chapter
Wolff, Stefan L.;
(2006)
Zur Situation der deutschen Universitätsphysik während des Ersten Weltkrieges
Article
Nickelsen, Kärin;
(2008)
Ein bisher unbekanntes Zeitzeugnis: Otto Warburgs Tagebuchnotizen von Februar--April 1945
Chapter
Lemuth, Oliver;
Stutz, Rüdiger;
(2003)
“Patriotic Scientists”: Jenaer Physiker und Chemiker zwischen berufsständischen Eigeninteressen und “vaterländischer Pflichterfüllung”
Be the first to comment!