GERMANY: Two Diagnoses

Two psychiatrists recently made long-range studies of Adolf Hitler. In-The New Republic last week an anonymous one called Medicus, warning against the dangers of such guesses, tentatively diagnosed him as a schizophrenic who was disappointed in his mother and has been expressing that disappointment in aggression all his life. As a rule, he said, when aggressive neurotics reach the height of their powers they automatically collapse. Medicus found evidence of growing confusion, indecision and fear in Adolf Hitler’s recent actions, and, as a way of saying Herr Hitler may go crazy, concluded, “a purely pathological outcome is not at all excluded.”

In Zürich Correspondent Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker interviewed Zürich Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, original Freud disciple who quarreled with Dr. Freud over personal problems and psychoanalytic theory 28 years ago, founded a rival psychoanalytic system. Adolf Hitler, said Dr. Jung, “belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine man. . . When I have a patient [who believes he is] acting under the command of a higher power [see p. 18], a power within him . . . I dare not tell him to disobey. . . . He won’t do it if I do tell him. … All I can do is attempt . . . to induce the patient to behave in a way less harmful to himself and society. . . . Instinct should tell the western statesmen not to touch Germany in her present mood. She is much too dangerous!” Practical political suggestion by Dr. Jung was for the western statesmen to turn mystic Herr Hitler’s attention away from the West. “Let him go to Russia. That is the logical cure for Hitler.”