What Nazism Did to Psychoanalysis

What Nazism Did to Psychoanalysis explores the impact Nazism had on the  evolution of psychoanalysis and tackles the enigma of the transformation  of individual hate into mass psychosis and of the autocratic creation  of a neo-reality. Addressing the effects of the Holocaust on the  psychoanalytic world, this book does not focus on the suffering of the  survivors but the analysis of the concrete mechanisms of destruction  that affected language and thought, their impact on the practice of  psychoanalysis and the defences that psychoanalysts tried to find  against the linguistic, legal and symbolic chaos that struck the  foundations of reality. Laurence Kahn discusses the struggle against the  appropriation, by the Nazi language, of key terms such as demonic  nature, drives, ideals and, above all, the Selbsterhaltungstrieb (the  self-preservation drive), which became, with Hitler, the axis of the  living space policy, the "Lebensraum". Covering key topics such as  trauma, transgenerational issues, silence and secrecy and the  depredation of culture, this is an essential work for psychoanalysts and  anyone wishing to understand how strongly the development of  psychoanalysis was affected by Nazism.