Affirming Psychosis: The Mass Appeal of Adolf Hitler

By P. Matussek

This study emerged out of the collaboration between a psychiatrist, a scholar of cultural studies, and a sociologist. It offers a new response to the reciprocity between the individual and the collective share in the dynamic of Hitler's delusion. Relying on a model of psychosis based on the most recent research on the polarity of the - private and - public self, and incorporating, with critical revisions, new literature on the cultural history of the Third Reich, the study demonstrates that Hitler was most certainly a - pathological case, who escaped the clinical consequences only because he had found an audience that stabilized his psychosis through an immense degree of acceptance. This interdisciplinary approach to psycho-historical Hitler research avoids the dead ends of previous, one-sided psychological or historical efforts and sheds new light on the issues of responsibility with respect to both the dictator and his German helpers."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 082049836X
• ISBN13: 9780820498362
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing
• Length: 216 Pages