LETTERS
Editors: Paul Roazen's review (Dissent, Spring 1986) of my book, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich, suffers not only from an ignorance of what I wrote about psychotherapy in Nazi Germany but of...
...Not having studied the "remarkable essay"' to which reference is made I shall withhold comment...
...We require acuity, not despair...
...I fail to see why this practice should provoke the surprise and indignation of poor Salisbury...
...Thus it may take a tone from my research and my conclusions...
...I was taught that the way you value a person is not by their looks or by money and success but by his or her personal integrity...
...1. Double publication: As a modest token of friendship, I gave Dissent the right to reprint in the U.S...
...Thus when he actually stumbles up against one of the major points of my thesis—i.e., that there is a continuity in the development of psychotherapy in Germany from the 1920s through the Third Reich and into the postwar period—he throws away any discussion of the importance of this fact by invoking "a collapse of Western civilization...
...Dissent published about 360 words more than The Australian but it seems obvious that The Australian cut most of them for space reasons...
...it is typical of a mindlessly partisan and Whiggish view of science and the professions that no longer passes muster among historians...
...Roazen sees psychotherapy only in the abstract, only as a sophisticated and compassionate means to human aid and comfort...
...Years later when I learned about his role as the first white musician to integrate the big bands, I was bowled over...
...3. Chang zheng: Any historian will indeed rightly say that it should be translated as "Long March," as this has become a conventional, universally accepted term...
...Period...
...I am a devotee of Leys's elegant prose style if not always of his excitable opinions...
...I share Roazen's disgust for the Nazis, but as a historian I cannot simply plaster the label "Nazi" on everything associated with their regime...
...I suggest that he consult, for instance, China News Analysis, No...
...Even in Nazi Germany there were areas of gray where easy condemnations do not suffice...
...You had to be in high school in the Chicago area in the late 1930s, as I was, to appreciate him, not as the King of Swing, but as a man...
...Such attempts at understanding can only aid us in unmasking the problematical in the human experience so as to help chart the way for improvement...
...Both Mr...
...At the New York Times don't they demand that journalists check their information before taking up their pens...
...So wake up, Dr...
...Leys...
...After some digging I found that my hunch was correct...
...Surely, I had read these words before...
...no harm in using different names...
...a book review that I had written for an Australian newspaper...
...There were even instances of humanity among psychotherapists and it is at least arguable that with the evil of collaboration with the Nazis there came also some immediate and long-term good through the preservation of psychotherapeutic practice in Germany...
...But because we have a long "lead time" for each issue, you have to send us your letter within three weeks after getting an issue of Dissent in order to get it into the next issue...
...No harm, I suppose, in marketing the same piece of prose twice, especially in markets so far separated as Sydney and New York...
...In fact I went to rather incredible pains to make this point...
...2. Were there any celebrations in China last year of the 50th anniversary of the Long March...
...q Editors: When Benny Goodman died on June 13th, I felt as though I had lost someone in my own family...
...At the New York Times don't they ever teach journalists to do some research before making sweeping statements...
...Their deletion slightly reduces the negative slant but the loss is slight...
...This uncharacteristic indifference puzzles me...
...We reserve the right to edit letters down to fit our space and to choose which shall be printed...
...One of the most disturbing aspects of this mutual exploitation in the case of psychotherapy in the Third Reich was the easy accommodation to the demands of the regime provided by the "neo-Freudian" trend toward adjustment and social conformity...
...I have often done this in the past, and I intend to do it again in the future—at least as long as the editors of Dissent consider that my pieces are worth printing...
...As I pointed out in a letter to The Australian, the 50th anniversary of the Long March was not, as Dr...
...When he finally finds the time to study Manne's statements, it will be most interesting to hear his comments...
...Letters must be kept to about 500 words, typed, double-spaced, and carry the full address and name of the sender...
...Incidentally no Chinese scholar whom I have consulted translates Chang Zheng as "the Long Expedition of Conquest...
...As I understand it, the 50th anniversary fete is to be held this coming autumn, not last (as I would have expected...
...Secondly, psychotherapy as an evolving profession was and is more than the selfless practice of a technique: it was and is an institutional, a social, and a political entity...
...So if you want to write about something that you like, or dislike, in or about Dissent, please do it quickly...
...This ignorance stems from two sources...
...I had not read very far when I was overcome by a feeling of OP vu...
...Leys and Dr...
...Indeed, to insist, as Roazen does, that no psychotherapy worthy of the name existed under the Nazis is to engage in precisely that denial which has allowed German psychotherapists and psychoanalysts until recently to repress any historical connection between their professions and the Third Reich...
...Thus my thesis is not that psychotherapy in the pristine sense in which Roazen defines it "flourished" (a word I quite purposely omitted from the book) under Hilter, but is, as I state on page four, that "the history of psychotherapy in the Third Reich is not an inspirational tale of advances in sophisticated theory and the alleviation of mental suffering, but rather of a morally and intellectually ambiguous accommodation to the established powers of Nazi Germany, on both the individual and collective level, in pursuit of professional and institutional status...
...The worst book" Roazen has "read in ages" is not the book I wrote...
...Perhaps no magazine ever expressed the wish to reproduce any of his own writings...
...The problem is that he never goes beyond condemnation to examine critically the nature of Hitlerism in power and its place in German and Western history...
...Leys) averred, "celebrated with such pomp" in China last year...
...Simon Leys's "Maoist History, Maoist Myth" of Dissent had appeared as Pierre Ryckmans's "Great Myths and Mao's Long March" in Rupert Murdoch's newspaper, The Australian of Sydney...
...Salisbury should do his elementary homework...
...Russell Jacoby's The Repression of Psychoanalysis is the best recent work on this trend within psychoanalysis...
...Editors: When I came upon Simon Leys's review of my The Long March: The Untold Story in the Spring Dissent I plunged into it with avidity...
...Before making any pronouncements on this subject, Mr...
...The first is a naive and idealistic definition of psychotherapy...
...The Australian could not find space for Mr...
...Prejudice and Chicago were synonyms...
...Roazen writes that we "should be wary of the implications of any system of ideas that aims to 'harmonize' the individual and the dominant social order," but fails to mention that my book documents how this very trend was aggravated by the "medicalization" of psychotherapy as well as by the professional opportunism of its practitioners...
...After all, Leys is a stylish pen name anfl Ryckmans is the more pedestrian name under which its 528 possessor teaches at the Australian National University...
...Leys's fine but aged story of the pigs and truffles but The Australian's readers perhaps don't go in much for truffles...
...The second source of Roazen's ignorance is his indulgence in necessary and laudatory outrage over Nazism...
...Odd, perhaps, but certainly harmless...
...Ryckmans insert what seem in Australia to be obligatory references to Wilfred Burchett...
...To understand such things is not to condone them...
...Thus my account could not, as he suggested, "match so closely the tone of these celebrations...
...The Dissent version does repeat what might be described as an inadvertence by Mr...
...Benny Goodman met that test...
...I share Roazen's concern for the implications of the use of science by evil regimes (and vice-versa), but I wish to understand the historical particulars of this instance rather than to engage in wailing and gnashing of teeth...
...First of all, psychotherapy, as I show in my book, was and is a composite of various ideas and ideals which in Germany among other things provided one of the bases for its inclusion in the Nazi system...
...I subscribe of course to the Ryckmans-Leys capsule version of the Long March as a "Long Rout" and a "Protracted Disaster...
...And the two reviews are substantially the same...
...Ryckmans (Mr...
...We welcome succinct letters from our readers...
...The importance of the history of psychotherapy in the Third Reich is that it reveals deep ambiguities and ironies...
...Editors: Paul Roazen's review (Dissent, Spring 1986) of my book, Psychotherapy in the Third Reich, suffers not only from an ignorance of what I wrote about psychotherapy in Nazi Germany but of what history as a discipline is about...
...We shall have to wait and see...
...You can't be alert to what is important with your head in your hands...
...Allegedly, he never even bothered to read the latter...
...Letters will not be returned to senders unless they are accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelopes.0...
...1298, December 1, 1985, pp...
...2) "to conquer," "to subjugate," as in zheng fu for instance...
...But such a definition will not do...
...They all say it means the Long March...
...Yet, any lexicographer (or any dictionary, for that matter) will tell that zheng has two basic connotations: 1) "expedition," as in yuan zheng for instance...
...1-2, where he will find a series of references concerning these celebrations, as reported during the year (1985) in the Chinese press...
...Salisbury, who displayed such an acute sensitivity in reaction to some minor aspects of my article, repeatedly declined to discuss the far more serious issue which I raised in my reference to R. Manne's essay...
...4. The Burchett connection: Mr...
Vol. 33 • September 1986 • No. 4
