VLVL2 Nazi aviation & psychoanalysis

[pynchonoid]

[...] The second volume traces the advances in
psychoanalysis made during
WWII.  The focus is on the psycho-techno developments
of the
aircraft pilot ("the first cyborg"), and on the
adjustments, in
theory and therapy, that were made by civilian
populations under
total air war conditions.  In the wake of German air
strikes on
British cities, Rickels observes, the effects of war
on civilian
women and children were examined for the first time.
The new
insights led to the development of family systems
therapy, which
remains a treatment option among psychiatrists today.
[3]

While Rickels does not argue the political affinity of
Nazism and
psychoanalysis, he demonstrates their cohabitation and
juxtaposition
not least in the treatment of homosexuality. 
According to Rickels,
homosexuality belonged to an interdisciplinary field
of intervention
over which the proponents of sterilization,
castration, or
elimination competed with psychotherapists for best
results.  In
diagnosing the majority of homosexuals to be "kernel
neurotics,"
analysts such as J. H. Schultz, the German inventor of
autogenic
training, meant to restore human resources to the
community's gene
pool (v. 2, p. 209).  "The racism of the Nazi
community,"  Rickels
writes, "helped Aryan homosexuals out:  if the genes
were right,
then how could there be a tight fit with racial
inferiority?
Neurosis existed--precisely because it could be cured"
(v. 2, p.
205).

At the crossroads of cure and elimination, a
historical reader might
note the missed encounter between Rickels and Detlev
Peukert who
situates the genesis of the "Final Solution" with the
spirit of
science.[4] A similar point could be made with regard
to Peter
Fritzsche's study of German aviation in the first
three decades of
the twentieth century.[5] Consideration of such works
would have
added historic specificity to Rickels' concern with
the Nazi culture
of both total healing and airmindedness. [...] 

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German at h-net.msu.edu (March, 2004)

Laurence A. Rickels. _Nazi Psychoanalysis, Vol. 1:
Only
Psychoanalysis Won the War_. Foreword by Benjamin
Bennett.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press,
2002. x + 300
pp. Illustrations, bibliography, index. $54.95
(cloth), ISBN
0-81663696-6; $19.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8166-3697-4.

Laurence A. Rickels. _Nazi Psychoanalysis, Vol. 2:
Crypto-Fetishism_. Foreword by Benjamin Bennett.
Minneapolis and
London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. x + 332
pp.
Illustrations, bibliography, index. $54.95 (cloth),
ISBN
0-8166-3698-2; $19.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8166-3699-0.

<http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=212761083259536>


see also:
"the notorious Karl Bopp, former Nazi Luftwaffe
officer and subsequently useful American citizen [...]
often in Nazi drag" (221-222)

...plus appropriate connections to V., The Crying of
Lot 40, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon.



	
		
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