>I think pretty much every philosophical movement of any significance in Germany
at the time was dragged into service of the NSDAP, with the exception of
psychoanalysis.
With exceptions, but psychoanalysis was no exception: After the official dissolution of the Institutions of german psychoanalysis in the Middle of the 1930s quite a lot of their staff, libaries and so on were taken to the "Deutsches Institut für psychologische Forschung und Psychotherapie" (German Institute for psychological research and psychotherapy) in Berlin. Outside of the academic boom of psychology in Nazigermany, culminating in the establishment of an official order of diploma exams for psychologist in 1941, with "Deutsches Institut" a professionalisation of psychotherapy started. Head of the Institute was Matthias Heinrich Göring, the cousin of the Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. The so called Göring Institute was funded by official money, from 1939 on by Institute of Labour research (Arbeitswissenschaftliche Institut) of the "Deutsche Arbeitsfront", a fascist brain trust with more than 300 staffed scientists. Of course you can say, all this was not "real", "true" etc. psychoanalysis - but that' the same problem with quite a lot of other traditions.
And there were leftist adherents of psychoanalysis in the Göring Institute: John Rittmeister, sentenced to death in February 43 as a member of the so called "Red Orchestra", the Schulze-Boysen-Harnack- Group, excuted in May 43. And Käthe Draeger, a long year
member of the Communist Party, from 1929 on member of the Brandler-Group KPD-O. Together with other comrades (Werner Röhr, Eugen Zgainski, Heinz Krause) Käthe Draeger formed in 1937 the fourth Berlin committee, the more ore lesse nationwide - as fare as communication was possible - underground leadership of the KPD-O, active to the end of the war. By profession a teacher, she started studies ad the Berlin Institute for Psychoanalysis in 1931 and was an member of the German association for psychoanalysis in the 1930s. As as a suspected leftist she was send to the occupied areas in Poland in 1942 and could continue the political work in the underground only because the Göring-Institute needed well trained lecturers and took her back to Berlin. After the war she continued political work in the Brandler Group and the activities in psychoanalysis as well.
These leftists were the exceptions, not psychoanalysis in general. See: Cocks, Geoffrey. (1985). Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Göring Institute (2nd ed). New York: Oxford University Press.
If we look on philosphical traditions in general, may be Spinoza and much of the french enlightment were the great exceptions. There was no Nazi-use to be made out of their writings.
Sebastian
________________________________________________________________________ AOL eMail auf Ihrem Handy! Ab sofort können Sie auch unterwegs Ihre AOL email abrufen. Registrieren Sie sich jetzt kostenlos.