PUBLIC LECTURE: The Collusion of German Psychiatry in the Holocaust: Lessons for the Present

Abstract: Before Germans were killing Jews they were killing Germans. Other Germans, with the emphasis on other, people they thought were inferior, less worthy. They devised many imaginative names for such people, but the one that stuck was 'those whose lives were not worth living.' This was meant to be a judgment: 'In my eyes, you do not deserve to live; your life, in my eyes, is not worth living.'

Many of the 'patients' were just children whom the authorities called 'defective.' Some were blind, some deaf, some slow learners, others were lame, or had some physical defect. Some mere disobedient, others were confined to wheelchairs. They were between 2 and 17. They were a burden on the state. The authorities wanted them diagnosed as incurable, then gassed. Psychiatrists throughout Germany were only too happy to take on the job. Some of them held chairs of psychiatry at some of the worlds most prestigious universities, Tubingen, Heidelberg, Berlin. Only one psychiatrist in all of Germany refused to sign the death warrants. And when the story broke, in full, after the war, what happened to these professors?

And when the details finally came out, how did the world of psychiatry react? Did they seek out their own moments of inaction, their silence, their complicity, or did they seek to bury the story, to diminish its importance, its significance to modern psychiatry? These are the uncomfortable questions we must ask today. This is not merely an exercise in history: consider that Peter Singer, called 'the worlds most influential philosopher,' has resurrected, with no obvious embarrassment, the phrase 'a life not worth living,' to justify his views about the killing of 'defective' children.

Biographical note: Jeffrey Masson is a former Sanskrit scholar and Freudian analyst. An American psychologist and writer currently resident in New Zealand, he is author of 'When Elephants Weep', 'The Pig who Sang to the Moon' and the controversial 'Against Therapy'.

Masson graduated from the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute as a Freudian analyst in 1978. He went to Munich to learn German and to research the origins of psychoanalysis. Masson was fired from his position as Projects Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives after going public with his belief that Freud capitulated to reactionary forces in society that wanted sexual abuse kept hidden. His research at the time was incorporated into three books, 'The Assault on Truth', 'A Dark Science', and 'The Complete Letters Between Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fliess', which created international controversy.

Questioning whether psychotherapy had much to offer he wrote his least beloved book 'Against Therapy' and as a final word on his disillusion with the profession 'Final Analysis', before beginning his work with and about animals.

Masson has made appearances on US national televisions shows including 'Good Morning America' and 'Oprah'. His website is www.jeffreymasson.com

Jeffrey Masson is visiting Perth in February as a guest of the School of International, Cultural and Community Studies, Edith Cowan University.

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