Normality and national socialism

Journal/Book: Psyche Z Psychoanal Anwend. 1997; 51: Rotebuhlstrasse 77, D-7004 9 Stuttgart 1, Germany. Klett-Cotta Verlag. 385-409.

Abstract: The author takes a number of historical and psychosocial indicators as evidence that National Socialism was not a failure of German history but rather a hidden part of a specific German normality which was brought forward. Especially alarming, in Kaminer's view is the everyday, business-like way in which the annihilation of Jews, gypsies and the mentally sick was undertaken. The root cause of this he sees in a widespread psychic configuration centering around an internalized world of destruction which in the Nazi era was then externalized and executed in the form of an ''execution'' of others. The rejection of weakness, helplessness and impotence preached by Nazi ideology, and adumbrated or reflected in educational and psychiatric literature of the 20s, 30s and 40s, points to the presence of denied or repressed aspects of the self projected onto ''foreigners''. The ''Volkskorper'' (the ''national body/constitution'') needed to be purified, purged of the ''pests'' contaminating it. The author identifies evidence to the effect that the ''psychic murder'' of children later to became implacable slayers in the Nazi era is something that is still perpetrated today on an intergenerational plane.

Note: Article Kaminer IJ, Melemstr 7, D-60322 Frankfurt, GERMANY

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