Volume 32, Number 20 · December 19, 1985
Fink Shrinks
By Fritz Stern
Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Göring Institute
by Geoffrey Cocks
Oxford University Press, 326 pp., $24.95
Die Professionalisierung der deutschen Psychologie im Nationalsozialismus
by Ulfried Geuter
Suhrkamp (Frankfurt), 594 pp., $34.00
Pathology afflicts every society, and in the first half of this century, Germans excelled in exemplifying it. They have also excelled in producing thinkers and scholars who analyzed this pathology. Twice in the era of the Great Wars, Germans, driven by dreams and terrified by reality, sought power and redemption. In 1945, the defeat of Hitler brought deliverance and division: the curse of frightened ambition seemed lifted. In the early years after the Second World War, the West Germans were our model wards: hard-working, prosperous, irenic, obedient, and accepting. But a terrible past and a divided and dependent present could not be banished forever. A new mood, at once anxious and assertive, has set in. The present chapter in the history of the Federal Republic could be characterized as 'the return of the repressed.'
Review, 5892 words
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