Book Review: DEATH OF A “JEWISH SCIENCE”: PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THE THIRD REICH. By James E. Goggin and Eileen Brockman Goggin. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2001, 242 pp., $35.95

Abstract

HISTORYof psychoanalytically informed treatment to everyone who was willing to come"; though the clinic was f inanced by Eitingon, analysts and candidates "had to pledge 10% of their time and 4% of their income" (p. 18). The BPI clinic was founded on humanitarian principles and sought to increase knowledge of the neurotic diseases and improve therapeutic techniques "by applying and testing them in new circumstances" (Freud, quoted on p. 18).Peter Gay (1988) describes the BPI in 1930 as "the most spectacular of the centres in which psychoanalysis ensured its future" (p. 19). In 1933, just three years later, the BPI was fundamentally undermined by the rise of the Third Reich.The authors, rejecting the findings of Rose Spiegel (1985) and Geoffrey Cocks (1997) and in agreement with Ernest Jones (1953), maintain that the psychoanalytic movement in Germany did not survive the Third Reich. Their evidence, archival material from the Berlin Document Center (BDC), contradicts Spiegel's f indings. They reveal her account as inconsistent and historically inaccurate. Spiegel did not discuss how members of the Göring institute were trained, or the fact that psychoanalysis needs freedom for open discussion. Spiegel interpreted M. H. Göring's behavior positively; however, records at the BDC indicate that he belonged to the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Dozentenbund, extreme Nazi organizations responsible for identifying "politically incorrect" professionals. He required members of the institute to read Mein Kampf, Hitler's call for destruction of the Jews and the basis for the 1933 decrees that led to the "final solution." This philosophy, as well as the euthanasia laws, eventually became central to the way practice was conducted.The authors disagree with Cocks, arguing that "the historic record reveals," contrary to his position, that psychoanalytic practitioners, their theory, and their method did not survive the Nazi regime (p. 28). Freudian psychoanalysis, which emphasizes freedom of the individual, autonomy, and the opportunity to create and experience one's private life in relative freedom, cannot exist in a totalitarian society. Totalitarianism annuls scientif ic and political freedom by requiring the individual to subsume his or her self into the totality of the State. "Thus, with government-sanctioned use of police terror tactics, the regime was able to establish a new form of mass conformity" facilitated by "intrusion into private life" (p. 42). Under the Nazi regime, Descartes' cogito ergo sum became, in Orwellian terms, a "thought crime." The analyst John Rittmeister was executed for using the Cartesian phrase in