The psychological origins of the rise of Nazism

Abstract

Despite being conceived first and foremost as a clinical instrument, psychoanalysis has been developed by Freud and post-Freudian theorists as a paradigm for understanding various socio-cultural phenomena, one of which being of the rise of Nazi ideology in post First World War Germany. This paper aims to review, within a critical outlook, the main psychoanalytic literature pertaining to that particular theme: as seen in Reich's merger of individual psychology and Marx­ism in the concept of "character", Erich Fromm's allegiance to Frankfurt School Critical Theory, and Klaus Theweleit's usage of Deleuze and Guattari's psychoanalytically informed philosophical thought to explain the literary productions and fantasmatic ideation of the -reikorps.