In the Aftermath of Nazi-Germany: Alexander Mitscherlich and Psychoanalysis—Legend and Legacy*

In 1977 the German Psychoanalytical Association (Deutsche Psychoanalytische Vereinigung—DPV) invited the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) to Berlin for one of its next international conferences, which resulted in a heated discussion in the business meeting of that congress in Jerusalem. The invitation was turned down and only later accepted, in a modified form—Hamburg instead of Berlin. Until then little had been known in the DPV about the involvement of German psychoanalysts with the Nazis. Most German publications on the history of psychoanalysis during the Third Reich, originating as they did from contemporary witnesses who presented the analysts as victims, were apologetic and not really informative (Baumeyer 1971; Boehm 1951; Kemper 1973). The picture of German psychoanalysts presented by oral history was one of secret resistance fighters and inner emigrants. There were only two critical reports, but little attention was paid to these (Thomä 1963; Dräger 1971). Räthe Dräger had been one of the psychoanalysts in the “Göring Institute” and a communist, and so was also a contemporary witness. Helmut Thomà, on the other hand, was one of the post-war generation of psychoanalysts and was senior physician in the Psychosomatic Clinic in Heidelberg. Not until the mid-70s was research carried out—and then not yet in Germany—which testifies to, and even documents, the involvement of German psychoanalysts with the Nazis (Cocks 1975; Huber 1977)—but in 1977 they were not yet known in Germany.1