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Dr. Fries begins by remarking that those individuals or nations who can think with relative objectivity have the advantage over their opponents. Widespread knowledge of human motivations can give us such an advantage in the present war. The remainder of the paper summarizes the author's beliefs about Fascism, frustration, and preventive mental hygiene. Poverty and emotional conflicts predispose to a regression to infantile dependence and sadism. In dictatorships this regressive tendency is exploited and the activity of the individual's superego is short-circuited, the dictator becoming a national superego. The author analyzed an Austrian youth who demonstrated this mechanism. He utilized the aggression which was released by his Youth Organization to support his unresolved Oedipus hostility toward his father, who was a policeman. Rejected children who must constantly repress hostility to their parents find special comfort in the omnipotent father-dictator to whom even their parents must bow. This fact accounts for the frequency with which children denounce their parents to the authorities in Fascist countries. Similar impulses such as preOedipal aggression, lust for power, and wishful fantasy motivate fifth columnists. The author recommends a national education program exposing such conscious and unconscious motives as a means for combatting fifth column activities.
Frustration in early life, through its effect on emotional development, helps to form adult attitudes to national and international affairs. The way in which a child reacts to frustration is determined at birth but can be modified by the environment. Hence, in order to assess accurately an individual's behavior, the total situation must be examined. For example, the cradleboard used by the Navaho Indians appears at first sight to be a very frustrating instrument. Actually, the tight binding gives the child a feeling of security and, when propped against a tree, he is able to take a larger par