12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not significant but has moments of interest, November 7, 2004
This review is from: Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet (Hardcover)
In Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, psychiatrist Fritz Redlich, a Jewish contemporary, attempts to determine how physical ailments and mental disorders may have affected and influenced the Nazi leader.
This type of work, known as a "pathography," has no set or determined structure. In the first part, Dr. Redlich describes "Hitler's Life from Birth to Death," including such topics as "Entry into Politics," "Ascent to Power," and "Warlord." The second part, "Review, Comments, and Interpretations," delves into more detail about the medical and psychological issues brought up in the first section.
This first part is the more problematic one. Dr. Redlich is not a historian and is not equipped to present or interpret history, especially history as fraught with the unknowns, distortions, and lies that surround Hitler. For example, he refers to the "billy goat story" several times. He notes that Hitler was not known to be cruel to animals as a child, except for the "dubious" billy goat story-a highly unlikely story of questionable origin that no historian would cite as an exception, even with the "dubious" qualifier.
He also discusses Geri Raubal's death but provides no insight into what actually happened or how Hitler reacted to it. He briefly discusses a few innuendoes that Raubal was murdered, but there is nothing here-about a critical moment in Hitler's psychological life-that is not covered more thoroughly and carefully in other books (Ron Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, for example). On the other hand, there is sometimes too much detail about Himmler, Goebbels, et. al, which does not particularly relate to Hitler, his health, his psychology, or his actions. Indeed, much of the first section could have been eliminated as it often provides irrelevant information or biographical detail that is explored better in Hitler biographies and Nazi and WWII histories.
In the second part, Dr. Redlich attempts to diagnose Hitler, based on the scant and unreliable information available. He dismisses diagnoses when there is too little evidence or the known symptoms are inconclusive, although given that there is so little information and that neither Hitler nor anyone surrounding him is a reliable source, it is still primarily speculation. Dr. Redlich does conclude that Hitler had Parkinson's syndrome, of unknown etiology, although at one point he mistakenly refers to it as Parkinson's disease. He also provides a plausible explanation for Hitler's headaches.
In his discussion of Hitler's psychology, Dr. Redlich covers anxiety, depression, sexuality, and other obvious topics (often inconclusively) as well as such things as his lies and ambivalence. Again, there is nothing conclusive to say; many of these questions are still hotly debated by Hitler scholars (for example, whether he believed or came to believe his own fabrications).
The question of cruelty is an interesting one. It's easy to say that Hitler was cruel, given the death, destruction, persecution, and torture he wrought against dissenting Nazi Party members, Gypsies, Jews, and others. This gets short shrift in Dr. Redlich's analysis, because it's not clear that Hitler was cruel in the conventional way many of us might think. Someone who gains pleasure from kicking a dog or witnessing the kicking of a dog is clearly cruel-but generally Hitler did not directly participate in or even witness what was happening in the concentration camps. He kept his distance from it. More discussion of such detached cruelty and distancing, with real-life examples, might be useful.
The reader does learn a great deal about the mundane details of Hitler's health (including his ongoing problems with flatulence, which Dr. Redlich does not quite connect to his vegetarian diet), about the doctors who treated him, and about some of the medical practices still used in the 1940s (including leeches).
Dr. Redlich's ultimate diagnosis of Hitler is one that few lay persons would recognize; it is part of the title. Hitler saw morality simplistically in black-and-white terms, he believed he'd been chosen by a higher power to do what he did (and was afraid he would not live long enough to accomplish it), and found a convenient scapegoat (the Jews) around whom to rally his followers. This is a cautionary tale that is especially relevant in today's international political arena.
It's important to note that Dr. Redlich's effort could have been more condensed and focused. In addition, he is not a writer and fails to make what are necessary paragraph breaks to large chunks of text with multiple subjects (as does his editor).
Given how little is known of Hitler and how much of his own history he falsified, it would have been difficult to have produced a definitive work. Dr. Redlich honestly describes his personal reasons for writing Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet, which ultimately is not a particularly significant contribution to the Hitler literature. Those who wish to try to understand every aspect of Hitler's life (including his flatulence and bad teeth) or who wish to recognize political paranoia wherever it rages may find this a must-read.
Diane L. Schirf, 7 November 2004.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hitler on the couch, yet again, December 30, 2000
This review is from: Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet (Hardcover)
There is nothing revelatory in this book and the errors are predictable and redundant. Putting Hitler on the couch is nothing new, Walter Langer and the OSS produced the first psychological profile of Hitler in 1943. It is still in print and available on Amazon and is much superior to this effort.
The main problem is that Hitler is dead and putting him through psychoanalysis is problematic, to say the least. I have an innate distrust of non-Germans (or non-German speakers) writing biographies of Hitler, so Redlich has a leg up in this department. The vast majority of Hitlerian documents have never been translated and a non-German speaker tackles the project with a severe disadvantage. But does Redlich use his innate advantage? No, he relies on discredited information, outdated sources and throws in some psychological treatises of his own, which lack credibility.
Hitler was an extraordinarily complex, complicated personality and the vast majority of historians have missed the mark in interpreting him or understanding him. Redlich utterly misses the mark in explaining Hitler's relationships with women. He was hardly a sexual pervert and maintained a monogamous, though neurotic, relationship with Eva Braun for the last thirteen years of his life.
If you want a steady, readable and reliable biography of Hitler, I urge you to consult John Toland's masterful 1976 book. Nothing has surpassed it in the 25 years since its publication.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Psychobiographies: examining the trees before the forest, June 26, 2000
As far as psychobiographies go, I rate this work: 5 stars. Typically, I am not fond of psychohistorical works.
The author, Redlich, is a retired psychiatrist and former dean of the Yale University Medical School. Self-confessed, he is not a professional historian. But better an academic psychiatrist examining a historical figure than historians playing psychologist. The latter group, in my opinion, has a strong tendency to lapse into cliched pop-Freudianism: the subject loved his mother, hated his father, therefore has a latent homosexual, etc. None of this in Redlich's book.
This work is primarily a medical, pharmacological examination of Hitler, rather than the nonmedical viewpoint of psychology or psychoanalysis. For this reason, I find Redlich's work far more convincing than, say, Waite's HITLER THE PSYCHOPATHIC GOD. Redlich's diagnosis is based more upon physical/psychological cause and effects of drugs rather than the psychobabble of the alleged un- or subconscious motives.
My problem with this work, as with all psychobiographies, is: (1) that the patient is dead. This makes an accurate diagnosis impossible. Redlich's concluding chapter, in my estimation, is lacking in a concrete diagnosis. (2) by focusing on an individual's mind alone, it isolates all other external factors, such as, economic, political and military considerations. But then, one cannot ignore the ramifications of the historical figure's/patient's mind.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, regardless of whatever qualms I may have. Its a work to be read in conjunction with standard biographies of Hitler.
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