In Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: The Deployment and Development of Psychoanalysis in the Allied Struggle against Germany. (360G-Wellcome-084956_Z_08_Z)

'In Pursuit of the Nazi Mind' demonstrates how models of the unconscious and cognate clinical techniques contributed to and were reshaped by the Allied struggle against the Third Reich. Important studies of Nazi psychology, centred on the concept of the superego, were mobilised in military intelligence, post-war planning and policy recommendations. My goal is to contextualise and critically assess medico-psychiatric and psychoanalytical endeavours to grasp the irrational wellsprings of N azism, and to show their significance more widely for the history of psychology in western culture. A panoramic survey will cover the emergence of new Freudian approaches to politics in the 1920s, their apotheosis in the 1940s and disintegration in and beyond the 1960s. Five accompanying core cases, for which extensive documentation exists, are designed to illustrate the varied roles and influences of applied psychoanalysis around the war: 1. Testimony of Hess s doctors, in Britain 1941-45, an d at Nuremberg. 2. Studies of Hitler, commissioned by the US Office of Strategic Services in 1941. 3. Experiments conducted upon Nazi sympathisers through the Allied Control Commission, 1945-6. 4. Psychoanalytic materials furnished to the UNESCO project, Tensions Affecting International Understanding' , 1947-51. 5. Clinical evaluations of imprisoned Nazi murderers psychic lives, 1945-1970.