When W. H. Auden wrote poetically soon after Freud’s death that Freud had become ‘a whole climate of opinion’, this was certainly true in the world of 1940. Psychoanalysis and world events had collided with Freud dying in exile from his beloved Vienna in Hampstead, London soon after the declaration of war in September 1939. The regard for psychoanalysis then and the centrality of the theory to mainstream psychiatry is well illustrated in this new work of detailed scholarship by Daniel Pick. Pick is best known to those interested in the history of psychiatry for his Faces of Degeneration (1989) and in this most recent book he combines his interests as a professor of history and a trained psychoanalyst in giving an account of how the theory of psychoanalysis was called upon by military intelligence to give insight into the mindset of Nazism and fascism. Psychoanalytic theory was already exploring the issue of mass psychology and how populations might fall under the sway of a charismatic leader, and Pick references the work of Fromm, Reich and others in this regard.
Where this book is most fascinating is in its account of psychiatrists coming face to face with Nazi leaders. The most celebrated example is the case of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, who in a bizarre episode flew himself to Britain in May 1941, ostensibly to try to arrange peace talks with Britain. Concerns soon emerged about the sanity of the deputy Führer and Dr Henry Dick of the Tavistock Clinic was engaged as part of the medical team looking after Hess under conditions of secrecy and security and with British Military Intelligence involvement. (A more popular account of the Hess internment can be found in Camp Z by Stephen McGinty (2012), including the drama of Hess’s suicide attempts.) Pick reproduces the statement by Hess at the Nuremberg trial along with extracts from the clinical notes of Dick. In the end it is difficult to tell with Hess where paranoid and perverted political ideology becomes psychopathology but his testimony and that of other Nazi leaders at Nuremberg, both to the court and to psychiatrists, illustrates well the powerful hold that an ideology and a charismatic leader can exert even after defeat. Hess clearly states he would have behaved no differently if he had his time over again and his faith in Hitler remained to the end. A number of psychiatrists published accounts of their examinations of the Nuremberg war criminals in the post-war years and Pick draws on these accounts.
For such a detailed work of scholarship this book is inexpensive and is a recommended addition to both institutional and personal libraries. It is doubtful today that psychiatrists would be viewed as having a position of privileged insight into a political phenomenon such as the rise of fascism and this book therefore documents an important and forgotten juncture in the history of our discipline.
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