The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

The story of how pyschoanalysis was used in the struggle against Nazi Germany - told by a historian and practising psychoanalyst
Closely follows the British pychoanalytical interrogation of Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, following his bizarre capture in 1941
Weaves together Allied attempts to understand Hess and Hitler with the wider attempt to understand the pathology of Nazism and its hold over the German people
Shows how Freud's famous 'talking cure' was harnessed to the wartime needs of military intelligence

The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

Description

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.

The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

Author Information

Daniel Pick, Professor of History, Birkbeck, University of London

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.

The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind

Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts

Daniel Pick

Reviews and Awards

"In the last few years we have witnessed a growing historical interest in the contribution given by social sciences to the Allied war effort against Nazism. Daniel Picks book adds another fragment to this fascinating and controversial story." - Raffaele Laudani, War in History

"a wide-ranging account of a fascinating topic" - English Historical Review, Catherine Epstein