`In pursuit of the Nazi mind?' the deployment of psychoanalysis in the allied struggle against Germany

This paper discusses how psychoanalytic ideas were brought to bear in the Allied struggle against the Third Reich and explores some of the claims that were made about this endeavour. It shows how a variety of studies of Fascist psychopathology, centred on the concept of superego, were mobilized in military intelligence, post-war planning and policy recommendations for ‘denazification’. Freud's ideas were sometimes championed by particular army doctors and government planners; at other times they were combined with, or displaced by, competing, psychiatric and psychological forms of treatment and diverse studies of the Fascist ‘personality’. This is illustrated through a discussion of the treatment and interpretation of the deputy leader of the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess, after his arrival in Britain in 1941

Psychoanalytic sociology and the traumas of history: Alexander Mitscherlich between the disciplines

This article examines the way aspects of recent history were excluded in key studies emerging from psychoanalytic social psychology of the mid-twentieth century. It draws on work by Erikson, Marcuse and Fromm, but focuses in particular on Alexander Mitscherlich. Mitscherlich, a social psychologist associated with the later Frankfurt school, was also the most important psychoanalytic figure in postwar Germany. This makes his work significant for tracing ways in which historical experience of the war and Nazism was filtered out of psychosocial narratives in this period, in favour of more structural analyses of the dynamics of social authority. Mitscherlich?s 1967 work The Inability to Mourn, co-authored with Margarete Mitscherlich, is often cited as the point at which the ?missing? historical experience flooded back into psychoanalytic accounts of society. I argue that this landmark publication doesn?t hail the shift towards the psychoanalysis of historical experience with which it is often associated. These more sociological writers of the mid-century were writing before the impact of several trends occurring in the 1980s-90s which decisively shifted psychoanalytic attention away from the investigation of social authority and towards a focus on historical trauma. Ultimately this is also a narrative about the transformations which occur when psychoanalysis moves across disciplines

Gewalt in der Schule

Vortrag auf der Tagung Bindung, Trauma und soziale Gewalt , 3.-5.12.2004 in Frankfurt am Main

Introduction : narcissism, melancholia and the subject of community.

Sigmund Freud’s twin papers, ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ (1914) and ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917 [1915]), take as their formative concern the difficulty of setting apart the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ worlds, and of preserving a stable image of a boundaried self. Whilst it is true that the term narcissism especially has come to be deployed in ways that seem foreign to the complexities of Freud’s 1914 paper (by its reduction to a personality disorder or its use as a broad-brush cultural diagnosis), we suggest in this introductory chapter that neither narcissism nor melancholia can be thought about today without expressing some debt to Freudian metapsychology. However, whereas Freud was most evidently concerned to describe the structure of ego-formation, subsequent commentators have preferred to emphasize the cultural and normative dimensions of these terms. Accordingly, we consider the respective discursive histories of narcissism and melancholia and find that although they have been put to work in very different ways they remain grounded by a shared concern with mechanisms of relation and identification. Indeed, this shared concern is the basis upon which they’ve been most productively reanimated in recent years: the rise of melancholia as a critical aid to the study of cultural displacement and dispossession, and the determined redemption of narcissism from its pejorative characterization as fundamentally anti-social. We argue that what is most noteworthy in this post-Freudian literature is the increasing relevance of metapsychology to social and political theory. The language of psychoanalysis, extrapolated from the clinic, permits a detailed examination of the boundaries which construct and challenge the terms of social solidarity. Specifically, this takes place though careful reading of the complex practices of (dis)identification at the heart of ego-formation (at both individual and group levels), and the associated mechanisms of defence, for example: introjection, incorporation, projective-identification, and splitting. By recognising the complexity of how communities get made, and connecting this with recent literature on counter publics and the commons, we demonstrate that Freud’s frameworks of narcissism and melancholia remain essential for any contemporary understanding of political association

Prioritizing Risks and Uncertainties from Intentional Release of Selected Category A Pathogens

This paper synthesizes available information on five Category A pathogens (Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Variola major and Lassa) to develop quantitative guidelines for how environmental pathogen concentrations may be related to human health risk in an indoor environment. An integrated model of environmental transport and human health exposure to biological pathogens is constructed which 1) includes the effects of environmental attenuation, 2) considers fomite contact exposure as well as inhalational exposure, and 3) includes an uncertainty analysis to identify key input uncertainties, which may inform future research directions. The findings provide a framework for developing the many different environmental standards that are needed for making risk-informed response decisions, such as when prophylactic antibiotics should be distributed, and whether or not a contaminated area should be cleaned up. The approach is based on the assumption of uniform mixing in environmental compartments and is thus applicable to areas sufficiently removed in time and space from the initial release that mixing has produced relatively uniform concentrations. Results indicate that when pathogens are released into the air, risk from inhalation is the main component of the overall risk, while risk from ingestion (dermal contact for B. anthracis) is the main component of the overall risk when pathogens are present on surfaces. Concentrations sampled from untracked floor, walls and the filter of heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system are proposed as indicators of previous exposure risk, while samples taken from touched surfaces are proposed as indicators of future risk if the building is reoccupied. A Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis is conducted and input-output correlations used to identify important parameter uncertainties. An approach is proposed for integrating these quantitative assessments of parameter uncertainty with broader, qualitative considerations to identify future research priorities

How long do nosocomial pathogens persist on inanimate surfaces? A systematic review

BACKGROUND: Inanimate surfaces have often been described as the source for outbreaks of nosocomial infections. The aim of this review is to summarize data on the persistence of different nosocomial pathogens on inanimate surfaces. METHODS: The literature was systematically reviewed in MedLine without language restrictions. In addition, cited articles in a report were assessed and standard textbooks on the topic were reviewed. All reports with experimental evidence on the duration of persistence of a nosocomial pathogen on any type of surface were included. RESULTS: Most gram-positive bacteria, such as Enterococcus spp. (including VRE), Staphylococcus aureus (including MRSA), or Streptococcus pyogenes, survive for months on dry surfaces. Many gram-negative species, such as Acinetobacter spp., Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Serratia marcescens, or Shigella spp., can also survive for months. A few others, such as Bordetella pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae, Proteus vulgaris, or Vibrio cholerae, however, persist only for days. Mycobacteria, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and spore-forming bacteria, including Clostridium difficile, can also survive for months on surfaces. Candida albicans as the most important nosocomial fungal pathogen can survive up to 4 months on surfaces. Persistence of other yeasts, such as Torulopsis glabrata, was described to be similar (5 months) or shorter (Candida parapsilosis, 14 days). Most viruses from the respiratory tract, such as corona, coxsackie, influenza, SARS or rhino virus, can persist on surfaces for a few days. Viruses from the gastrointestinal tract, such as astrovirus, HAV, polio- or rota virus, persist for approximately 2 months. Blood-borne viruses, such as HBV or HIV, can persist for more than one week. Herpes viruses, such as CMV or HSV type 1 and 2, have been shown to persist from only a few hours up to 7 days. CONCLUSION: The most common nosocomial pathogens may well survive or persist on surfaces for months and can thereby be a continuous source of transmission if no regular preventive surface disinfection is performed

From Prototyping to Allotyping. The invention of change of use and the crisis of building types

The chapter analyses the invention and the form of the discourse on building conversion as one particular instance of redefining what a technology is and how it operates. I describe a shift from expert defined closure to lay based openness and tinkering as a shift from prototyping to allotyping: Since the early 1970s, change of use and building conversion have become a central and fashionable discourse among architects and architectural theorists. Before the 1970s, buildings were understood as technologies, as ‘society made durable’. The notion of building type was central to link a building to a given use. A bank was a bank because architects applied existing templates, prototypes, to turn a building into a bank. In the 1970s, suddenly buildings became flexible – discursively, since building conversion always existed: ‘Building type’ no longer was a meaningful link between a building and its use. A bank should not stay a bank, but become a hotel, a theatre or a flat, in short: an allotype. The chapter elucidate this central shift in thinking about buildings and reflects on the special case of allotyping buildings and how it continues to vex thinking about buildings