Hitler: Jung: O'Neill

Abstract

The "madness" of Adolf Hitler remains an open question. At the height of the dictator's power, Harvard psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer prepared a psychological portrait for the wartime OSS in an effort to predict his likely reaction in a given scenario; Langer suggested that Hitler was psychologically impaired due to a genital defect. On the other hand, however, various witnesses have reported that Hitler often consciously and deliberately flew into apparently mad rages in order to cow and manipulate others; he was quite capable, then, of turning his "insanity" on or off at will. Whether or not Hitler the man was clinically crazy, his movement is generally perceived as cultural insanity, a reversion to barbarism from the heart of Western civilization. Historians and literati have presented Hitler as Satan incarnated, often though without any real attempt to understand his psychological underpinnings. Psychohistorians who have investigated the subject have often been unable to assess Hitler's relevance to our culture.