Nazis and Psychoanalysis
In 1933 psychoanalysis in Germany faced extinction by the Nazi regime. The Nazis condemned psychoanalysis as a 'Jewish science' and books by *Freud were burned by Nazi mobs. In 1935 Jewish members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and the German Psychoanalytic Society were forced to resign. This move was approved by Freud and *Jones, president of the *International Psychoanalytic Association, as a means of preserving the practice of psychoanalysis in Germany. *Jung, president of the International General Medical Society for Psychotherapy from 1933 to 1940, exercised through word and deed controversial and ambiguous influence on psychoanalysis in Germany and Europe during this period. In 1936 the psychoanalytic institute and society became part of the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy under psychotherapist Matthias Heinrich Gring, a cousin of Nazi leader Hermann Goering. The new institute, housed first in the old psychoanalytic institute, represented an attempt by various schools of psychotherapy in Germany to protect and advance the discipline within the new order. Nazi bureaucrats saw the institute and the allied German General Medical Society for Psychotherapy as a means of eliminating an independent psychoanalytic presence in Germany and of mobilising the expertise of psychotherapists in service to the regime. 'Göring Institute' psychoanalysts Carl Müller-Braunschweig, Felix Boehm, Werner Kemper, and 'neo-analyst' *Schultz-Hencke argued protectively and ambitiously for the practical utility of psychoanalysis in strengthening human performance, a view somewhat in line with neo-Freudian concepts of social adjustment and productivity. In 1938, however, the German Psychoanalytic Society was abolished, becoming 'Work Group A' of Göring's institute, while the Nazi annexation of Austria that same year destroyed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute and Press.
The history of psychoanalysis between 1933 and 1945 was largely repressed in Germany for almost forty years after the war, even though - or especially because - there were distinct continuities of psychoanalytic personnel and practice after 1945 in both post-war German states. In West Germany, a split psychoanalytic movement had two versions of the history. The German Psychoanalytic Society (e.g. Dhrssen) took the position that psychoanalysis had been 'saved' by a few during the Nazi regime, while the German Psychoanalytic Union argued that it had been 'destroyed'. Younger generations of West German psychoanalysts, spurred by the historical work of Cocks, have since documented the more complicated and problematic history of the field under Nazism.
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- Cocks, G. (1985) Psychotherapy in the Third Reich. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rev. edn New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1997.
- Dührssen, A. (1994) Ein Jahrhundert Psychoanalytische Bewegung in Deutschland. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
- Goggin, J. and Goggin, E. (2000) Death of a 'Jewish Science'. Lafayette: Purdue University Press.
- Lockot, R. (1985) Erinnern und Durcharbeiten. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag.
- Lockot, R. (1994) Die Reinigung der Psychoanalyse. Tübingen: edition diskord.
G. C.