Vital and public health statistics of reporting countries for the years 1924-1929.

The idea for this book sprang from Geoffrey Cocks' curiosity as to what happened in the new, dynamic field of psychotherapy hi Germany with the advent of Hitler. While traditional views merely asserted that the Nazis destroyed the field of psychotherapy in Germany, a viewpoint justifiably based on the testimony of those in the field who had emigrated from Germany to escape Nazi persecution, Cocks learned that there was more to the story. He looked to several interesting shards of evidence that pointed to the possibility that one could reconstruct a history of morally questionable professional developments in German psychotherapy during the Third Reich. The evidence included: existence of a journal for psychotherapy published continuously from 1928 to 1944; accounts of a psychotherapist who assumed leadership of his colleagues and who was a relative of the powerful Nazi leader Hermann Goring; and a strong psychotherapeutic lobby in German medicine that was intellectually impoverished but apparently not destroyed by the expulsion of the prominent and predominantly Jewish psychoanalytic movement. Non-Jewish psychoanalysts and psychotherapists had in fact pursued their profession under the aegis of the so-called Goring Institute, with substantial support from agencies of the Nazi party, the Reich government, the military, and private business. Much research has been done in the ten years since the first edition of this book was published, hence the need for a second edition. Included is more information on the history of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Nazi Germany, on the social history of the Third Reich, and on the history of the professions in Germany. Three new chapters analyze postwar developments and conflicts as well as broader issues of continuity and discontinuity in the history of modern Germany and the West. In addition, the author has reorganized the volume along chronological and narrative lines for greater ease of reading. "Psychotherapy in the Third Reich "is an important work for psychotherapists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, sociologists, and historians.

The idea for this book sprang from Geoffrey Cocks' curiosity as to what happened in the new, dynamic field of psychotherapy hi Germany with the advent of Hitler. While traditional views merely asserted that the Nazis destroyed the field of psychotherapy in Germany, a viewpoint justifiably based on the testimony of those in the field who had emigrated from Germany to escape Nazi persecution, Cocks learned that there was more to the story. He looked to several interesting shards of evidence that pointed to the possibility that one could reconstruct a history of morally questionable professional developments in German psychotherapy during the Third Reich.The evidence included: existence of a journal for psychotherapy published continuously from 1928 to 1944; accounts of a psychotherapist who assumed leadership of his colleagues and who was a relative of the powerful Nazi leader Hermann Goring; and a strong psychotherapeutic lobby in German medicine that was intellectually impoverished but apparently not destroyed by the expulsion of the prominent and predominantly Jewish psychoanalytic movement. Non-Jewish psychoanalysts and psychotherapists had in fact pursued their profession under the aegis of the so-called Goring Institute, with substantial support from agencies of the Nazi party, the Reich government, the military, and private business.Much research has been done in the ten years since the first edition of this book was published, hence the need for a second edition. Included is more information on the history of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Nazi Germany, on the social history of the Third Reich, and on the history of the professions in Germany. Three new chapters analyze postwar developments and conflicts as well as broader issues of continuity and discontinuity in the history of modern Germany and the West. In addition, the author has reorganized the volume along chronological and narrative lines for greater ease of reading. Psychotherapy in the Third Reich is an important work for psychotherapists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, sociologists, and historians.

Collaboration in the Holocaust. Murderous and torturous medical experiments. The "euthanasia" of hundreds of thousands of people with mental or physical disabilities. Widespread sterilization of "the unfit." Nazi doctors committed these and countless other atrocities as part of Hitler's warped quest to create a German master race. Robert Proctor recently made the explosive discovery, however, that Nazi Germany was also decades ahead of other countries in promoting health reforms that we today regard as progressive and socially responsible. Most startling, Nazi scientists were the first to definitively link lung cancer and cigarette smoking. Proctor explores the controversial and troubling questions that such findings raise: Were the Nazis more complex morally than we thought? Can good science come from an evil regime? What might this reveal about health activism in our own society? Proctor argues that we must view Hitler's Germany more subtly than we have in the past. But he also concludes that the Nazis' forward-looking health activism ultimately came from the same twisted root as their medical crimes: the ideal of a sanitary racial utopia reserved exclusively for pure and healthy Germans. Author of an earlier groundbreaking work on Nazi medical horrors, Proctor began this book after discovering documents showing that the Nazis conducted the most aggressive antismoking campaign in modern history. Further research revealed that Hitler's government passed a wide range of public health measures, including restrictions on asbestos, radiation, pesticides, and food dyes. Nazi health officials introduced strict occupational health and safety standards, and promoted such foods as whole-grain bread and soybeans. These policies went hand in hand with health propaganda that, for example, idealized the Führer's body and his nonsmoking, vegetarian lifestyle. Proctor shows that cancer also became an important social metaphor, as the Nazis portrayed Jews and other "enemies of the Volk" as tumors that must be eliminated from the German body politic. This is a disturbing and profoundly important book. It is only by appreciating the connections between the "normal" and the "monstrous" aspects of Nazi science and policy, Proctor reveals, that we can fully understand not just the horror of fascism, but also its deep and seductive appeal even to otherwise right-thinking Germans.

This book focuses on how scientists themselves participated in the construction of Nazi racial policy. Proctor demonstrates that many of the political initiatives of the Nazis arose from within the scientific community, and that medical scientists actively designed and administered key elements of National Socialist policy.