Affirming Psychosis

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.