In Psychotherapy in the Third Reich, Geoffrey Cocks focuses on a curious phenomenon which has heretofore escaped notice: even at the zenith of Nazi persecution, the profession of psychotherapy achieved an institutional status and capacity for practice unrivaled in Germany before or since.
This book shows how, despite the professional disruptions and moral derelictions of life under Hitler, German psychotherapists turned peril into opportunity. The man chiefly responsible for fostering the practice of psychotherapy was Matthias Heinrich Goering, a cousin of Nazi leader Hermann Goering. Under the protection of the Goering name, a full-fledged institute was established in Berlin, funded by the German Labor Front, the Luftwaffe, and the Reich Research Council.
In addition to examining the conditions that allowed psychotherapy to flourish during this period, Cocks treats broader issues, such as what a society’s treatment of mental illness says about the culture as a whole, and why psychoanalysis was seen as Jewish and a threat to the state, while psychotherapy received the support of Hitler’s regime.