Quest for the Nazi Personality

Zillmer, Eric A.; Harrower, Molly; Ritzler, Barry A.; Archer, Robert P.

• Contents: Foreword. Preface. The Quest for the Nazi Personality. Historical and Psychological Perspectives of the Nuremberg Trials. Evaluating the Prisoners at Nuremberg. Delays in the Publication of the Nazi Rorschach Records. The Rorschach Inkblot Technique. Interpreting the Nazi Records: The Nazi Elite. Danish Collaborators and German Occupation Personnel: A New Sample. Two Case Studies of Nazi War Criminals. The Myth of the Nazi Personality.

"Zillmer, Harrower, Ritzler, and Archer have added substantially to this literature by basing their conclusions on a database drawn from the Nazi hierarchy, rank-and-file member of the party, and non-Nazi collaborators....After an impressive review of major previous scholarly efforts, richly detailed within a historical perspective, Zillmer et al. present their findings in two extensive case studies of Nuremberg defendants and in detailed summaries, compared to contemporary data, of all the other Rorschach data."—Contemporary Psychology"The authors' treatment of these issues is thorough. They offer an academic discussion of the Rorshach test results for professionals and a psychohistorical overview for the general reader ... The book will appeal to any psychologist interested in the Rorschach and in Nazi history. It will also be especially useful in graduate coursework on Rorschach and projective techniques (since) the protocols lend themseles to a variety of useful classroom activities around Rorschach interpretation."—The Pennsylvania Psychologist Quarterly"This study offers a valuable introduction to the Rorschach technique and surprisingly tangled history of its use at Nuremberg...It is thus a service of this book that it reproduces the verbatim records of all of the Nazi Rorschachs, including six by Kelly never published before....In sum, this book is a valuable contribution to the history of Nazism and its effect on the world. It also provides a worthwhile discussion of important issues of methodology in the human sciences. The prose is clear and the organization logical."—American Historical Review"Rational, data-based explorations of such explosive questions as the origins of types of the Holocaust-producers' personalities, using newly recovered information from the Nazi War Crimes archives, are rare; we are in the debt of these clinical psychologists for their postmortem dissections in the hope that resurgences of genocide may be prevented by their fresh insights."—Irving I. Gottesman, Ph.D.Honorary Fellow, Royal College of Psychiatrists, Sherrell J. Aston Professor of"This work for the first time provides a professionally responsible examination of the Rorschach evidence. Aside from the theoretical merits of this work it adds significantly to our knowledge of what went on in Nuremberg, as well as the changes in the perception of the Nazi personality."—George M. Kren, Ph.D.Professor of History, Kansas State University