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Psychotherapy in the third Reich: A research note
Author(s) -
Cocks Geoffrey
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(197801)14:1<33::aid-jhbs2300140106>3.0.co;2-u
Subject(s) - materialism , soul , german , nazism , nazi germany , psychoanalysis , dismemberment , romance , psychotherapist , state (computer science) , political science , psychology , sociology , epistemology , law , philosophy , politics , linguistics , algorithm , computer science
Abstract This study seeks to examine and illuminate some aspects of the history of psychotherapy in Germany during the twentieth century. The specific focus encompasses the profession's development between the two world wars and within that time frame centers on the National Socialist era. Psychotherapy existed for a long time on the margins of the academic medical establishment, accused by the holders of the powerful nosological tradition in German psychiatry of romantic and unscientific “dilettantism,” on the one hand, and of a materialistic “dismemberment of the soul,” on the other. The internal chaos of the Nazi state and the precedence taken by mobilization over reform allowed the growth of psychotherapy from the status of a method to that of a profession.