Affirming Psychosis, P. Matussek

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This study emerged out of the collaboration between a psychiatrist, a scholar of cultural studies, and a sociologist. It offers a new response to the reciprocity between the individual and the collective share in the dynamic of Hitler''s delusion. Relying on a model of psychosis based on the most recent research on the polarity of the - private and - public self, and incorporating, with critical revisions, new literature on the cultural history of the Third Reich, the study demonstrates that Hitler was most certainly a - pathological case, who escaped the clinical consequences only because he had found an audience that stabilized his psychosis through an immense degree of acceptance. This interdisciplinary approach to psycho-historical Hitler research avoids the dead ends of previous, one-sided psychological or historical efforts and sheds new light on the issues of responsibility with respect to both the dictator and his German helpers."