Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Göring Institute (review)

Book Reviews 147 less than seven percent ofNorth American Jewry. Inclusion ofat least some Conservative and Reform rabbinic rulings would thus have made this volume a more accurate reflection of the field of Jewish bioethics. As it is, I worry that non-Jews-and even some Jews-will mistake Zohar's treatment ofthese issues-and that ofother Orthodox writers-as the only possible ones, which they most certainly are not. As Louis Newman has pointed out,2 any reading ofthe Jewish tradition on bioethics-or, for that matter, on any subject-ean legitimately claim to be only a reading of Judaism on the subject, not Judaism's view, plain and simple. Second, on a number of occasions Zohar gets very close to striking out in new directions ofhis own on particular issues, but he always pulls back, suggesting only that others might fruitfully consider the direction in which he has pointed in making their decisions in Jewish law. I appreciate his respect for his elders and his reluctance to take the responsibility for specific decisions, but I nevertheless wish that he had taken that next step. This book is, after all, an immensely helpful view of the theoretical alternatives in bioethics with some insightful applications of those theories to contemporary issues; I just with that it had also been a new and innovative Orthodox voice on the issues per se. Elliot Dorff University of Judaism Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Goring Institute, byGeoffrey Cocks. 2nd ed., rev. and expanded. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997. 461 pp. $29.95. The first edition ofPsychotherapy in the Third Reich in 1985 was a significant event because it demolished a supposed truism: that psychoanalysis-the "Jewish" sciencehad died in Nazi Germany. Instead, the author, Geoffrey Cocks, showed how analysis had lived on at an institute ofpsychotherapy headed by a relative of Hermann Goring, Matthias Heinrich Goring, a neurologist and psychotherapist and an enthusiastic Nazi. Cocks's exhaustive research was hailed, yet his book was found wanting. Perhaps he had been swept away by his discoveries: that a form of psychoanalysis survived, that psychotherapy was very much a useful part of the Third Reich, and that lay clinical psychology had blossomed as never before. But for whatever reason, he neglected to 2Louis Newman, "Woodchoppers and Respirators: The Problem of Interpretation in Contemporary Jewish Bioethics," Modern Judaism 10:2 (February 1990), pp. 17-42; reprinted in Elliot N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman, Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality: A Reader (New York: Oxford, 1995), pp. 140--160. 148 SHOFAR Winter 1999 Vol. 17, No.2 ask hard questions, and reviewers-including myself (ISIS 77:3, I986)-called him to task for failure to consider the moral and intellectual implications and legacies of the relationship between health-care professionals and a totalitarian state. (And specifically, Cocks failed to ask whether a psychoanalysis especially can be carried out when both analyst and analysand live in a political and social atmosphere of fear and distrust.) Cocks has taken his critics to heart, and in the revised edition he tries to assess moral and ethical issues (though less so intellectual ones) without necessarily downplaying the important information he first brought to light thirteen years ago. He also focuses on certain topics that were in his original version but not as prominently as they are now in the new edition. Cocks strongly emphasizes the theme of continuity in German history; the Goring Institute, he argues, should not be seen as an aberrancy. Even before 1933 psychotherapists had a volkisch orientation, a desire for the reconstruction ofmodern society (a program of"social hygiene"), which would include a "spiritual" dimension. It was not difficult, then, for the therapists to put their services to the Nazi goals ofcreating a non-neurotic Volk and a national community. Psychotherapy thrived, and a whole new class ofpsychologists cum therapists was created which survived into the post-war years and forms a widespread and influential group right up to the present. And since a form of psychoanalysis persisted under the Nazis, there is a further link between the Third Reich and Germany today. Thus, Cocks's story is also that of the history of professionalization, a...