Psychoanalysis as a Weapon: Nazism on the American Couch

This article seeks to provide an explanation for the surprising fact that despite the destruction of the human, institutional and cultural base of psychoanalytic thought and practice in Europe caused by the rise of Nazism, psychoanalysis as a discipline did not enter into a crisis. On the contrary, the main effect of shifting the center of psychoanalysis to the other side of the Atlantic seems to have been an infusion of strength into American psychoanalysis.

Relying on a modified version of the “ecological niche” concept developed by Ian Hacking, the article traces this development to four vectors: (1) professional, (2) scientific, (3) social and (4) theoretical. (1) Although central European psychoanalysts had become refugees, they could rely on a professional network with a strong international and regional – that is, North American – support structure. (2) At the time, the concept of “prejudice” became central to social psychological theorizing. This topic lent itself well to an expansion of psychoanalytic thinking. (3) The focus on prejudice enabled leading émigré intellectuals, among them psychoanalysts, to join research programs of the American Jewish Committee. (4) Addressing the question of prejudice enabled psychoanalysts to trace defense mechanisms back to unconscious mechanisms stemming from authoritarian family dynamics, above all to “projection”.

The argument is that the coming together of these four vectors in the United States of the 1940s allowed individual émigré psychoanalysts, as well as psychoanalysis as a discipline, to gain strength rather than to enter into a crisis, despite severely adverse circumstances.