The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort

Loewenberg, Peter

doi:10.2307/1870516

Cited by 72 publications

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“…Political and nationalist movements involve far more than purely instrumental forms of mobilization, and social theory requires a theoretically informed sociology of emotions. Other scholars have engaged these issues, of course, and there is little doubt that Fromm's analysis of Nazism could have benefited from more stress on youth culture, gender, family, and sexuality (Koonz 1987;Theweleit 1989;Mitscherlich 1969;Loewenberg 1971). Moreover, contemporary scholars must avoid Fromm's tendency for overgeneralization and romanti cism.22 Nonetheless, Fromm's Escape from Freedom remains a neglected social science classic; his insights into the often irrational roots of human motivation demand our renewed attention.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited

McLaughlin¹

1996

Sociological Theory

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The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wing authoritarianism has again put the issues of violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory. German psychoanalyst and sociolo gist Erich Fromm 's workprovides a useful theoretical microfoundationfor contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Fromm's analysis of Nazism in Escape from Freedom (1941), in particular, outlines a compelling theory of irrationality, and his later writings on nationalism provide an existential psychoanalysis that can he useful for contemporary social theory and sociology of emotions. Escape from Freedom synthesizes Marxist, Freudian, Weberian, and existen tialist insights to offer an original theoretical explanation of Nazism that combines both macrostructural and micropsychological levels of analysis. After forty-five years of research into the social origins offascism and with recent theorizing in the sociology ofnationalism and emotions, Escape from Freedom, its analysis ofNazism, and Fromm's larger theoretical perspective are worth reconsidering. The recent worldwide resurgence of militant nationalism, fundamentalist intolerance, and right-wing authoritarianism has again put violence and xenophobia at the center of social science research and theory (Calhoun 1994). Attempts to understand these diverse social phenomena must be grounded, of course, in concrete analysis of the history, politics, and social structure of specific nations. Sociologists increasingly recognize the need to analyze the emotional dynamics of irrationality, destructiveness, vengeance, and rage. Yet we do not have an adequate sociologically informed theory of emotions. The work of German psychoanalyst and sociologist Erich Fromm provides a useful theoretical microfoundation for contemporary work on nationalism, the politics of identity, and the roots of war and violence. Yet Fromm has long been unfashionable among social theorists even though his concern with Nazism, extreme nationalism, and authoritarianism has never been more relevant. From the early 1930s through the early 1960s, Fromm was a major social theorist associated with the Frankfurt School for Social Research, neo-Freu dian psychoanalysis, critical sociology, and early New Left politics. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, Fromm's reputation had dramatically declined, and he was widely dismissed by radical intellectuals as the Norman Vincent Peale of the left, as Herbert Marcuse once polemicized (Marcuse 1955). Fromm's work was allegedly marred by what * Numerous scholars read and made suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. I would particularly like to thank

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited

McLaughlin¹

1996

Sociological Theory

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“…Physicians treating wartime neuroses (Sargant, ) report that single traumatic experiences can establish persisting and pervasive memories that transform the individual's personality. Autobiographies frequently attribute lifetime orientations to single significant experiences as when revolutionaries and other political ideologues (Billington, ; Davis, ; Loewenberg, ; Rejai & Phillips, ) attribute their powerful life‐long political convictions to incidents witnessed or experienced in childhood or adolescence.…”

Section: Ontogenetic Originsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Evidence for the first, critical‐period notion is stronger (Hinde, ) than that for the second, political‐generation notion (Bengston & Laufer, ). In the well‐studied case of National Socialism's appeal to the German population as Hitler rose to power in the early 1930s, autobiographical accounts suggest the importance of common experience during youth (Loewenberg, ; Merkl, ) but leaves unclear why the appeal of the National Socialists was so much less for the Catholic than the Protestant voters in Germany (Broszat, /1981; Childers, ; Hamilton, ; Schellenberger, ).…”

Section: Ontogenetic Originsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paradigmatic experiences and the evocation of collective memories

McGuire

2017

J Theo Soc Psychol

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In a previously unpublished article, McGuire proposes that ritualistic experiences, by activating archetypal memories, can have sizable impacts on the individual's personal experience and socially significant behavior. He discusses in turn the varieties of archetypal memories, their general characteristics, their origins, the paradigmatic ritual experiences that activate them, and the processes by which these rituals evoke the collective memories.

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“…I'm not sure why. There is no obvious reason why one could not, for example, take up the ideas about the modern Gennan experience recently sketched by Peter Loewenberg (26) and find out, birth cohort by birth cohort, how many individuals (and who) experienced the loss of their fathers during World War I, unemployment afterwards, and then chose the Nazis over the Communists. No obvious reason except the fact that it would be hard work.…”

Section: Conclusion and Possibilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Population and Pedagogy in France

Tilly¹

1973

History of Education Quarterly

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THE CONTRIBUTION OF PHILIPPE ARIES DISGUISED as demographic analyst and historiographical innovator, Philippe Aries launched his own clandestine attack on modernism twentY five years ago. As a demographic analyst, he carried on a series of perceptive interpretations of typical French populations and their evolution from the eighteenth century onward: Parisians, miners of the Northeast, Villagers of Touraine, Bretons, southerners, dwellers in the Alps all paraded past his eyepiece. As an historiographical innovator, he provided a Way of inserting demographic material directly into history. In 1946, that Was a daring thing to do. Aries also showed how family portraits, wardrObes , textbooks and other antiquarian paraphernalia, long condemned to SUPPly the comic relief for serious history, could become evidence of the deepest, longest transformations of social life. : Aries' accomplishments as demographic analyst and historiographical InnOvator are real and influential. The general message which emerges from his work is nevertheless a moral one. He portrays the disappearance of a communal world in which people were satisfied to stay in their places, and the rise of an egoistic world in which people sacrifice each other for sOcial mobility, as effective emotional life shrinks to the scale of the nuclear family. In his History of French Populations, integrated communities lose their coherence as a consequence of rampant differentiation. (1) In Centuries of Childhood, there grows a conception of the"family as an entity distinct from society, opposed to society, and seeking its own intereSts at the expense of society. (2) A new and separate conception of child-I am grateful to Priscilla Cheever and Leila AI-Imad for research assistance, and to Joan lind, Penni Snyder and Louise Tilly for suggestions concerning the presentation of the argument. Different segments of the research beneath this paper received support (rom National Science Foundation grant GS-2674, (rom a Faculty Research Grant o(the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan, and from the Mathematical Social Science Board. I offer these comments as a sympathetic outsider's proposals for future inqUiry. The text is essentially as given in February 1973 at the annual meeting of American Educational Research Association, New Orleans.

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The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort

Cited by 72 publications

References 0 publications

Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited

Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited

Paradigmatic experiences and the evocation of collective memories

Population and Pedagogy in France

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