Psychoanalysis, Nazism and ‘Jewish science’

Abstract

In this paper the author offers a partial examination of the troubled history of psychoanalysis in Germany during the Nazi period. Of particular interest is the impact on psychoanalysis of its ‘Jewish origins’‐something denigrated by the Nazis but reclaimed by more recent Jewish and other scholars. The author traces the rapid decline of the pre‐Nazi psychoanalytic institutions under the sway of a policy of appeasement and collaboration, paying particular attention to the continuation of some forms of psychoanalytic practice within the ‘Göring Institute’. He suggests that a feature of this history was the anti‐Semitism evidenced by some non‐Jewish psychoanalysts, which revealed an antagonism towards their own positioning as followers of the ‘Jewish science’.