In the Aftermath of Nazi-Germany: Alexsander Mitscherlich and Psychoanalysis -- Legend and Legacy

The First Post-War Legend Regarding Psychoanalysis in Germany

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). Käthe Dräger had been one of the psychoanalysts in the “Göring Institute” and a communist, and so was also a contemporary witness. Helmut Thomä, 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

In addition to the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, newly founded in 1953, and for seven years the only institute of the DPV (founded three years earlier in 1950) there were, in 1977, six other DPV institutes in West Germany and four study group. ² They all owed their existence to a boom in psychoanalysis resulting from the student movement and Alexander Mitscherlich’s public influence. ³ He saw himself as the founder of post-war psychoanalysis in Germany and was seen as its representative by the general public. His political notoriety and influence created an atmosphere in the West German institutes which led, at least the candidates and younger psychoanalysts—and they had become by now the majority in the DPV—to believe that German psychoanalysts had resisted rather than collaborated with the National Socialists. At that time, 1977, it was even felt by some that the invitation to hold an IPA-Congress in Germany would not have been rejected if Mitscherlich had issued it.

The painful disillusionment and the destruction of the legend of the innocent past precipitated by the IPA’s rejection of the German invitation marked the background of our exhibition (Brecht et al. 1985/1993). It led me, furthermore, to investigate the strange phenomenon that the passionate champion of truth and courageous critic Alexander Mitscherlich became, through his actions, a figure who obstructed the view of the true history of psychoanalysis in Germany and the involvement of German psychoanalysts with the Nazis (Brecht 1988). How was this possible? And what does this mean? These were the questions which aroused my interest and which formed the basis for my exploration. This is only a preliminary attempt to shape this phenomenon out of the facts already known and to suggest reasons for it.

The Second Legend of Post-War Psychoanalysis in Germany

I have already hinted at this. In the sixties and seventies Mitscherlich was the representative of psychoanalysis in West Germany and was seen as the founder of post-war psychoanalysis. This image was based on his own self-image and the manner in which he presented himself both to the general public and to those specialized circles which, because of their distance from Berlin, knew little about the painful and dramatic developments concerning the founding of the DPV ⁴ (Brecht 1985/1993, 192–218). This was particularly true for the Psychosomatic Clinic in Heidelberg, which had been founded by Mitscherlich in 1949. Founders of the later established institutes in Hamburg, Stuttgart-Tübingen, Ulm, Kassel, Munich, and Heidelberg-Karlsruhe came from that clinic in Heidelberg...