The Holocaust and the Revival of Psychological History by Judith M. Hughes (review)

Judith M. Hughes's book explores the uses of psychology and psychiatry in some landmark works in Nazi and Holocaust studies. Her selection criteria involved consideration of prominent figures, key debates, accessibility in English, and the authors' attention to sorting out how they acquired their understanding of their historical protagonists. For instance, she examines the psychology of leadership through the early portrait of Hitler by Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (1947), and the more recent, comprehensive work by Ian Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris (1999). Then Hughes concentrates on perpetrator motives through the works of Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (1993), Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996), Saul Friedländer, The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (1997) and The Years of Extermination (2007), and Jan T. Gross, Neighbors (2002) and Fear (2006). Finally, she looks at conscience among the perpetrators including Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (2006), Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness (1983), and Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1996). Hughes urges scholars to revisit their own assumptions about the historical agents they study. Based on her training as a psychoanalyst and a long career of studying its history, she asks us to reconsider how psychology, psychiatry, and, one might add, the growing use of neuroscience or any other science, can inform future scholarship.

At the heart of the matter, to paraphrase Hughes, is the question of how to develop scholarly interpretations that are more sensitive to the current research in psychology. Rejecting stories of demonic figures ruling over a helplessly enthralled populace, she wishes to bring out of the shadows the psychologically complex individuals who were motivated by their moral passions and convictions (179–182). She forewarns the reader that she will exclude from her examination of each author's work any exaggerated assertions of adult beliefs and childhood behaviors. Similarly, she means to avoid any notion of internalization or the projection of impulses, desires, or feelings that the subject refuses to recognize in him- or herself. Many of these concepts have become commonplace in the scholarship, perhaps even heuristic tropes akin to the emotions themselves, but they often stand in for something left further unexplored by the scholar. All of these misunderstandings, Hughes contends, show the shakiness of the historical subject's grasp on reality, the dynamic interaction between a person's internal world and the external world, and the problematic reliance of historians on what she calls a psychoanalytically inflected "commonsense" psychology (5). The purpose of Hughes's book is thus to provide a set of case studies for those considering the strengths and limitations in the use of psychoanalysis and psychology in history; the real task for the historian, she claims, is to tease apart the actual thinking and fantasies of the historical agents, in order to better understand those historical agents' actions they study.

Hughes devotes as much space as possible for a biography of each author, an account of the evolution of their work, and a description of their involvement in key debates. This narrative approach contextualizes the studies for anyone coming to these topics for the first time; and for more informed readers, it may provide a fuller portrait of familiar authors and their contributions. It is not always as clear, however, what psychological or psychoanalytical concepts Hughes would advocate. In fact, when analyzing how historians have used psychology to investigate the protagonists, many of the concepts that she views as outdated are exactly the ones she finds them using. In Hughes's estimation, some of the best uses of psychology and psychiatry in Holocaust historiography, like Kershaw's study of Hitler, ultimately fall back on these popular understandings of psychology while still bringing important psychoanalytic themes into discussion—including the German people's widespread belief in the power of the leader's wishes and Hitler's sense of being driven by a mission and feeling buoyed up by adulation...