The Inability to Mourn. Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich. New York:  Grove Press, Inc., 1975.  322 pp.

The application of psychoanalytic insights to history often has the flavor of banal reductionism. This cannot be said for Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich's work. The authors have made a major contribution to the study of collective behavior. The integrative and synthetic quality of the authors' investigations immediately brings to mind the work and caliber of an Erik Erikson. We see the complex dynamics of narcissism and depression unfold into a complex fabric of a broad historical vision. Focusing their attention on the past Hitler era, they observe a striking lack of guilt and shame within their patients. As part of this pattern, the memories of genocide, mass destruction, and cruelty of the Nazi period no longer have meaningful affective connections to the present. With penetrating insight the authors describe the dynamics of the interplay of historical-cultural forces.

After the idol has fallen, this weak ego again makes itself heard. It confesses to having succumbed to an overwhelming power; but, like a weak

Page 319

child, disclaims any responsibility for the mistaken educational practices of its elders. In spite of all their efforts at retrospective whitewash, the fact is that Hitler made it possible for Germans on a nationwide scale, with but few exceptions, to believe that their infantile fantasies of omnipotence could be realized. These fantasies were archaic drive-representations to which satisfaction had been promised. Giving up the quasi-primary process sense of security of a commonly shared ego-ideal involved considerable anxiety for a great part of the population. Bewilderment and disorientation reigned. As we have already described, the response to this was an attempt to reach back to uncompromised authorities and a withdrawal of affect from an immediate past discredited by defeat (p. 23)

The derealization of the past is seen as a massive defense against overwhelming melancholia. This cover also serves to fend off an inner impoverishment resulting from t