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Psychoanalysis Under Nazi Occupation: The Origins, Impact and Influence of the Berlin Institute

Author(s) : Laura Sokolowsky

Reviews and Endorsements

"'It is to the political credit of psychoanalysis', wrote Michel Foucault in the History of Sexuality, that in contrast to psychiatry and the German psychotherapy of the Nazi years, the 'Freudian endeavour' remained 'in theoretical and practical opposition to fascism'. In this magisterial historical work, Laura Sokolowsky details how the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute resisted attempts to replace psychoanalysis with therapies based on identification and suggestion, practices more conducive to totalitarianism. In so doing she draws some significant lessons about the current travails of psychoanalysis in the context of contemporary politics and the prevailing state of the discourse of the master." - Scott Wilson, Professor of Media and Communication, Kingston School of Art, London.

"Laura Sokolowsky has given us that precious thing - a history which illuminates the urgent stakes of our present. Detailing the socially engaged innovations that marked the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute's first flowering during the Weimar years, but also tracking its painful compromises with a Nazi regime that burned Freud's books, this lucid work provides us with a reminder: to remain subversive, psychoanalysis must be guided not by state power but by the desire of Freud and Lacan. In an era of the neoliberalisation of health, Laura Sokolowsky's brilliantly evoked history could not be more timely." - Colin Wright, Associate Professor of Critical Theory, University of Nottingham.