Bühler revisited in times of war—Peter R. Hofstätter’s The Crisis of Psychology (1941)

Abstract

During World War II in 1941, the psychologist P. R. Hofstätter added an article to the debate on the crisis of psychology in a distinctly Nazi academic journal. After introducing Hofstätter and the journal, the core elements of his diagnosis and therapy recommendation beneath the National-Socialist-verbiage will be expounded. Hofstätter, a student of Karl Bühler’s, ties on to his teacher’s crisis well-known publication, but perceives the crisis in a broader perspective and connects it to the decline of theology and of pastoral guidance. Hofstätter’s central, new aspect is the practice of psychology without which he sees it doomed. A central feature of psychological practice should be secular, non-therapeutic guidance of individuals. Various contextual facets are illuminated, Hofstätter’s thwarted attempts to get a university position, the recent establishment of psychology in Germany as a discipline teaching professionals, the abolition of German military psychology, the battle for the Berlin university chair of Wolfgang Köhler.