HERE AS A PASSAGE from a paper studying the role of psychology and psychiatry just before and after and, especially during the Nazi regime. After a number of topics within that, including psychiatry's and, to a somewhat lesser extent psychology's role in mass murders and the individual focus on the career of one of Germany's prominent psychologists, it concludes:
The Nazi era left a black mark on the history of psychology and specifically psychiatry. If it had not occurred perhaps German scientific findings from that period would still be held in the same regard as before they were permeated with the corruption of the opportunism and racism that flourished under the Nazi regime.
Psychology’s inherent susceptibility to be influenced by contemporary beliefs and concepts allow it to be easily molded to support popular ideas. While other branches of science, such as physics and chemistry were certainly exploited by the Nazis, psychology’s ambiguity, abstractness and susceptibility to contemporary ideology allowed the Nazis to thoroughly exploit on all levels. Additionally, the perception of much of psychology as being ‘Jewish’, coupled with the Nazis’ extreme anti-Semitism, gave Hitler a pretext to purge the discipline of dissidents and fill the empty positions with scientists who were aligned with Nazi ideology. Each of the various branches of psychology were used by the Nazis in different ways: holism helped define the purpose of the Volk and their role in the German nation; gestalt studied Rassenkunde and gave the Nazis empirical ‘proof’ of Aryan superiority; and psychiatry delved into the study of hereditary traits, which helped lay the groundwork for the Holocaust. On an individual level,many German psychologists were co-opted by the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe and many of those who remained in the universities clearly became corrupted by the opportunism that was so rampant during the Third Reich. As a whole, many of the broader concepts in psychology formed the basis for much of Nazi ideology. Psychology’s slow shift rightwards during the Weimar Republic led to the development of many theories and even entire branches, such as mass psychology, which gave National Socialism a base from which it could perpetuate itself and form the authoritative, totalitarian state that Nazi Germany became under Hitler’s rule.
That is certainly a good reason to be suspicious of any psychologist or historian of psychology praising an ideological position as among the most important things about their "science" considering that history. I would love to see an exhaustive anthology of the American, English and other review, quotation and citation of such published German language Nazi psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology to see the extent to which its ideological involvement with Nazism was even noticed by those professionals who were not among those targeted by that "contemporary ideology". I have shown before that English language eugenics, even well into the Nazi era and even up till America's entry into WWII had the most cordial, collegial and approving intellectual comment on the Nazis' science. The paper shows that even those who were involved with mass murder under the Nazi regime who were professional psychologists just picked up and continued to ply their trade under the new management after the fall of Hitler. Those in the behavioral sciences were seldom seriously forced to face what they did, at least one was awarded a Nobel prize after the war and as it was well known that they had provided "race science" congenial to the mass murder program of the Nazis. That ideological flexibility inherent to such science was certainly a boon for Nazi scientists even as Nazi science was condemned. For show, at least.
That can be seen in the last, concluding, paragraph of the paper which, if you've read the whole thing might make you gape in shock at its own moral ambiguity.
Nevertheless, psychology underwent a system wide development and professionalism due to some of the laws and regulations set in place by the Nazi government. Nazi Germany’s need for psychologists in the army allowed the field as a whole to prosper immensely and without these regulations and the desperate need for psychologists after the war, psychology as a profession could be different today.
So could psychology sticking with scientific method, starting with the need to actually be able to objectively observe what they claim to be studying. Which, of course, it can't. It should not be considered science, it is lore. But as I said yesterday, that's not my call to make. Science as a whole should be answerable for that.
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