Hitler on the couch

Hitler on the couch

Sources (OSS Psych reports and Gitta Sereny's biography of Albert Speer.)

George Casalis the Spandau prison chaplain urged that Hitler be accepted simply as ‘mad’ and urged that it be ‘[...left] at that’. Casalis’ advice, however, does not provide an adequate account of Hitler’s nature.


Hitler’s evil has its roots in childhood. He developed a dual and contradictory identification with both of his parents. He loved his mother but didn’t respect her and respected his father but hated him.

The influence of this dynamic on Hitler’s dictatorship can be seen in his contempt for the German people whom he is supposed to have loved (disallowing any form of retreat, ordering a nationwide scorched earth policy, etc.). Hitler’s love/hate relationship with the German people mirrors his relationship with his mother. He hates the German people for submitting to him as he hates his mother for submitting to both his father and him. His dependence on the German people for his power also reminds him of his emotional dependency on his mother.

Counteractive personality

The Fuhrer had a lot to compensate for. He was a frail and sickly child, afraid of his father and emotionally dependent on his mother. He was a vagrant and art school reject. He was turned down for conscription in the Austrian army and only rose to the rank of Corporal after four years of service in the German army after which he broke down with war neurosis and hysterical blindness. Hitler needed to defend himself against these facts.




As a result he was a man defined by his defence mechanisms. One of the most important among these was the so called reaction formation. A reaction formation is a defensive process in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency.

The man once described as ‘annoyingly subservient’ to superior officers becomes Germany’s super dominant hard man. In spite of his parents being related, his illegitimate father’s lineage being uncertain and most of his siblings dying in childhood he obsesses over marriage, pure blood and racial purity. These examples could go on ad infinitum.

This defence mechanism offers an explanation of Hitler’s total moral bankruptcy. Hitler’s counteractive personality, and by extension his leadership style, do not countenance subtlety, moderation or any sort of nuance.

In order for the reaction process to work, however, a number of other ancillary psychological tools are necessary. These tools, as with the reaction process, are all hijacked in furtherance of Hitler’s evil expansion programme.

The reaction process required, inter alia, an amazing capacity to compartmentalize ‘inferior’ portions of himself and an exceptional ability to displace or project his own feelings of inadequacy.




Compartmentalization

Hitler lead a double life keeping awesome decisions he made with top advisers strictly outside his small private circle.

Compartmentalization although originally used by Hitler to cordon off parts of his personality was eventually used to aid his evil enterprise. It allowed Hitler: -

• To conceal his own evil
• To be an effective orator
• To polarise his private and public attitudes

Hitler had an ‘exceptional capacity for compartmentalizing’. Hitler would have meetings ‘unter vier Augen’ or under four eyes where he could discuss hideous crimes to be carried out. This meant that

"he could be intelligent and considerate in his more personal relations"

while ordering heinous acts in secret.

Secondly, it was Hitler’s control in alternating between discrete parts of himself that made him such an effective speaker. Joachim Fest’s says of Hitler’s speaking that: -

"Those who think [his] success was entirely due to the unbridled, almost sensual extravagance of his delivery are mistaken; what it really was, was the calculated intermingling of frenzy and rationality."

Whether he was

"hoarsely hurling his accusations and tirades, or almost whispering his declarations of faith and love to his listeners, he was always unfailingly in control..."

.

Finally, Hitler’s division of himself into strictly separated parts meant that he was able to polarise his public and private personas. According to Speer, 'Hitler’s [public] attitude towards Hess was that he was a traitor and would have to be hanged when the war was over[...]'. This '[...]never changed'. However, 'privately' 'he was very attached to him.'

Projection

Projection is another one of Hitler’s primary defence mechanisms. It operates in service of his self-esteem protecting him from feelings of guilt and inferiority. Hitler’s projection seems, at times, so exaggerated that you have to remind yourself that he is not declaring war on himself. He accuses his opponents of the ‘brutality of a violent egoist’, of ‘cruelty and lack of moral restraint’ and he talks of ‘facing a doctrine of egoism and hatred’.

This projection, in turn, feeds into his pathological hatreds. So what ostensibly starts out as a defence mechanism gathers a whole new momentum and becomes a driving force for his evil.





Altogether more pathetic; altogether more serious

Hitler was a pathetic character who stormed out of the Olympic stadium because he couldn’t stand the embarrassment of having a Dutch woman try to hug him. He needed to talk or rather declaim to his adjutants in bed because he cannot be alone. He found being dominant all of the time exhausting hence the need for a submissive relationship with Albert Speer the Architect.

Charlton has suggested that

"in the context of that relationship where Speer was the ‘professional in charge, [Hitler] felt himself to be in a sense the weaker partner."

Observers have remarked how the meetings with Speer in pre-war years

"elated and relaxed Hitler and how he seemed happily indeed gaily, to defer to him."

Night of the Long Knives

Hitler’s guilt, after the night of the long knives, was noticeable in his Reichstag address. Arriving back from Bavaria, he was very emotional as he had, unusually, taken part in the attack on the SA. Later, however, Hitler having obtained very specific approval for the action from Hindenburg was ‘elated’.


He would keep pushing and pushing till he got some form of external validation or something he could use as justificatory material for his actions. Feelings of inferiority, his need to submit and all of his feelings of compassion and love were just ‘weaknesses’ to be purged from himself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said ‘Our strength grows out of our weaknesses’. If Hitler’s evil ‘strengths’ are viewed as his capacity to do monstrous acts, then, in a perverted sense, Emerson’s words apply to him.

Throughout his political career Hitler pursued a course of self-vindicating criminality. Once he had set out on his life of crime there was no going back. All of his failings actually made him much more dangerous. Hitler felt guilt for his crimes and because of this he had to affirm the rightness of his whole course of conduct.

Ultimately, he was damaged but he made all of his own choices.