Jack El-HaiReseñas

Un intérêt, mais relativement léger, tant sur l'immédiat après guerre que sur l'histoire de la psychiatrie. Le sous titre est assez mal choisi.½

Jack El-​Hai's book, "​​The Nazi and the Psychiatrist"​, tells the story of an Army Psychiatrist, Dr. Douglas Kelley, who interviewed ​Hermann Goering and ​the ​other ​top surviving Nazi leaders after World War II as they were preparing to face charges in the N​uremburg Trials. ​ His objective was to determine if there was a particular trait, characteristic, or psychiatric condition that caused or allowed those men to oversee so many atrocities to occur under their leadership. After numerous interviews and tests, Dr. Kelley came to conclude that there was nothing particularly abnormal about these men. The uncomfortable result of this conclusion is that the capability to perform similar atrocities was not unique to the Nazi Party or German people, but can exist anywhere. People can be incited to acts of cruelty by propaganda, scare tactics, repeated lies, and distrust of 'others', and when leaders exhibit these characteristics, it should be a red flag to all citizens capable of critical thinking and independent thought to beware.

After the Nuremberg Trials, Dr. Kelley returned to private life, and continued his practice and a lecturer, writer, psychiatrist, consultant, criminologist, teacher, and family man. Unfortunately for Dr. Ryan and his family, the stresses of his life brought out his darker side, and led to an unfortunate and unhappy life.

Two points st​uck with me upon completing Jack El-​Hai's book:
(1) that even highly regarded psychologists who spend their time helping others overcome their stresses and problems are not immune from suffering from similar afflictions; and
(2) the capability to inflict injury or death on others is a trait of homo sapiens which can surface in any of us unless guarded against.

A fascinating biography of Dr. Douglas Kelley, a psychiatrist famed for evaluating the Nazi war criminals before their judgment at Nuremberg. The particular focus of this book was Kelley's strange relationship with Hermann Göring, Hitler's second-in-command. Kelley, like many other professionals in his day, believed that there was a "Nazi personality type" or a mental defect Nazis shared that could effectively explain how these men and women committed such heinous crimes. However, Kelley found that the men he spoke with in their Nuremberg cells were disturbingly "normal." Well ahead of his time in his understanding of the nature of evil, and decades before Zimbardo's Standford Prison Experiment, Kelley was alone in his opinion that Nazis were not mentally disturbed, and this intellectual isolation took a toll on his own mental health.

Highly recommended to WWII junkies and those interested in psychology.

Following Germany's surrender at the end of World War II, American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley accepted a military assignment to become familiar with, study, and otherwise mentally examine the surviving high-ranking Nazi officials leading up to the Nuremberg Trials. His hope was to identify a common personality trait or defect which would assist in explaining their willing participation in the inhuman atrocities that took place.

Kelley's notes reveal fascinating and shocking insights into the psyches and motivations of these famous prisoners, including Göring, Hess, Rosenberg, Streicher, et al, in ways generally excluded from history textbooks. Several of the top officials, including Göring himself, admitted openly that they didn't even sincerely believe that Jews were inferior, but rather were merely a convenient means of inciting fear and anger among the rest of the German population.

A few passages of note, some chillingly relevant in today's political climate:

Kelley: "I was more than casually interested as a psychiatrist to find in Rosenberg an individual who had developed a system of thought differing greatly from known fact, who absolutely refused to amend his theories, and who, moreover, firmly believed in the magic of the words in which he had expressed them."

Hess had founded an alternative-medicine hospital that bore his name, "where the only requirement was that men practicing there could not be medical doctors," Kelley reported.

The anti-Semitism of the Nazis stuck Göring as useful bait for potential adherents with gripes more emotionally rooted than the mere imposition of an offensive peace treaty.

Kelley: "They are people who exist in every country of the world. Their personality patterns are not obscure. But they are people who have peculiar drives, people who want to be in power, and you say that they don't exist here, and I would say that I am quite certain that there are people even in America who would willingly climb over the corpses of half of the American public if they could gain control of the other half..."

Minnesota Book Award finalist, 2014

Fascinating look at some of Hitler's associates via psychiatric interviews.

I found this book difficult to put down. It is well written and flows easily in addition to being highly intriguing subject matter. Central to the book is the vying interpretations of the psychology of the minds of Nazi leaders yet this does not overwhelm the excellent story-telling from El-Hai.

At times it is unclear whether this is a biography of Goring or Kelley or an academic contribution to the aforementioned debate. However, as one gets engrossed in the story, it hardly seems to matter that it doesn't necessarily have a defined goal beyond the storytelling itself.

I would certainly recommend this to anyone interested in the history of WW2 or psychiatry in the 20th century. Overall, it is an enjoyable and fascinating read.

*Disclosure - I received a free ARC copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads.

Extremely well written book about the infamous lobotomist Dr - some bits were very gruesome especially when he did his 'operations' on children. A really interesting, if horrific, book. Would recommend.

Fascinating look at some of Hitler's associates via psychiatric interviews.

An interesting if not particularly enlightening account of psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley's investigation of the Nazi leaders tried at Nuremberg, and his own mental breakdown in the wake of his realization that they were no more evil than any number of people walking around every day.

Dr. Kelley was the prison psychiatrist at the Nuremberg for the Nazi leaders who went on trial for war crimes after the end of WWII. I have another book [Nuremberg Diary] written by G.M. Gilbert who was the prison psychologist and was looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately this book was more of a biography of Douglas Kelley than a book about the Nuremberg trials. Dr. Kelley left before the trials finished and the whole last half of the book is about his life up to the time he committed suicide.
The part of the book that is about Nuremberg begins with the arrest of Goring. He came in with 16 suitcases of belongings including one full of jewelry and another one full of percodan tablets. Percodan was not a well known drug at that time and the Allied doctors had to send the tablets to Washington for analysis. It took a number of months to slowly wean Goring from his addiction to the drug because of the high dosages he was taking.
Goring was a charismatic man and Kelley quickly formed a strong relationship with him. The book does not provide much information about the German leaders besides Goring and Hess. Hess was very unstable and claimed to have amnesia. He was evaluated by several teams of doctors to make sure he was competent to stand trial. During the trial Hess made a statement that he had been faking his amnesia which appeared to be true to some extent but he was mentally impaired and had some good days and mostly bad days.
Kelley administered Rorschach tests to all of the prisoners and the author wrote a good deal about them in several different parts of the book. After Gilbert arrived at the prison he worked with Kelley on testing the prisoners since he spoke German and Kelley did not. The results of the tests were evaluated by several doctors at different times as late as the 1990's. The purpose of evaluating the test results was to try to determine if the prisoners had similarities in their personalities that led them to become Nazis or they were just different people who decided on their own to follow Hitler. One group led by Gilbert said they saw similarities in the test results that showed a Nazi personality type. Kelley disagreed and concluded that the prisoners were an ambitious and intelligent, except for Streicher, group of men who rose to the top in the Nazi power structure. The premise of Kelley's conclusion was that what happened in Germany under Hitler could happen in any country. By and large the doctors who evaluated the results agreed with Kelley.
The biography of Kelley is not uninteresting but it was not why I read the book. After his return to the U.S. he built a career as a psychiatrist and specialized in forensic psychiatry. He taught at Berkeley and worked with police forces across the country. He did evaluations of people accused of crimes and became very well known in his field. He was an A personality who was driven to learn and achieve. He raised his oldest son with a strict regimen of activities aimed at turning out an intellectual superman. When the boy was seven years old Kelley would give him lists of words to memorize every day. Needless to say Douglas Jr. rebelled and ended up being a postal worker. At the end Kelley's demons became too much for him too handle and he committed suicide in front of his wife and son by taking potassium cyanide. Goring had done the same thing the night before he was scheduled to be hanged.
I don't recommend the book. There were parts that were interesting but the parts never came together to tell a coherent story. If you want to know about the psychology of the Nuremberg prisoners read Gilbert's book.

Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, who served as a psychiatrist for the U.S. Army in World War II, received an order to be the lead psychiatrist and work with the high level Nazis being detained for trial at Nuremberg after the war. He saw it as an opportunity to try to discern if there was there a common flaw among the Nazi leaders? “We must learn they why of the Nazi success so we can take steps to prevent the recurrence of such evil.” “What made these men criminals?” “Were they born with evil tendencies?” “Did they share psychiatric disorders?” “The trial and it run-up served as fascinating laboratories for the study of group dynamics of aggression, criminal motivation, defense mechanisms of the guilty, depression, and the response of deviant personalities to the judicial process.”
His conclusions are as relevant in the United States today, in 2013, as they were in 1947.
Hermann Göring, President of the Reichstag, Hitler’s deputy, Prime Minister of Prussia, Reich Minister of Aviation and Commander in Chief of the Luttwaffe, Minister of Economics, member of the Secret Cabinet Council, director of the Hermann Göring Works manufacturing combine, field marshal, chairman of the Reich Council for National Defense, Reich Forestry and Hunting Master, and Reichsmarshall, was the highest ranking Nazi in detention. After seeing the films taken when the concentration camps were liberated, he stated he didn’t know the extent of the atrocities committed against the victims and thought it was enemy propaganda. Until that point, he wanted all co-defendants to “defend themselves, be proud of their actions, and accept the punishment of the victors as a unified group.” At first, he told his fellows, to expected exile, then a group execution which “would grant them an afterlife as national martyrs.” Unlike the others, he didn’t blame Hitler or the Nazi regime. He considered himself a moving force in the Nazi movement.” Kelley spent a lot of time with Göring, admiring his intelligence but aware of his dark side. In a letter to his wife, Göring suggested that if both of them did not survive the war, their daughter should be sent to live in the US with Kelley and his wife.
The first two pages of THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST tell about the suicide of Dr. Kelley on January 1, 1958. The book then moves back to May 6, 1945. Realizing the war was soon ending, Göring sent a letter offering to help the Allies form a new government for the Reich. The Americans captured him but he didn’t get to meet with General Dwight Eisenhower or any other officials. Instead, he was taken into custody as a criminal for his crimes in World War II. At the time, he was addicted to paracodeine, taking forty pills a day. (Five tablets had the narcotic effect of 65 mg of morphine.) An army official found that “Göring’s hoard of [paracodeine] amounted to nearly the world’s entire supply.”
During the war, Kelley recognized “combat neurosis” and “combat exhaustion,” now referred to as PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder and worked to rehabilitate soldiers and determine who could return to the battlefield or noncombatant duty and who should be returned the US for further treatment. In the early years of the war, only 2% of the its victims in the North Africa campaign could return to duty. After Kelley trained physicians in ways to treat it, more than 95% of the service personnel were able to do so. He was able to use some of techniques when he worked with the Nazi prisoners to help keep them fit for trial. He combined psychiatry with criminology and also developed group therapy as psychiatric tool.
One of Kelley’s co-workers, Captain John Dolibois a welfare official helping detainees with their problems and listening to them observed “they spoke quite freely believing they would never face trial. We sometimes had trouble getting them to shut up. They felt neglected if they hadn’t been interrogated for a several days.” The psychological staff was able to easily get information where traditional interrogation methods failed.
Relying heavily on The Rorschach or Ink Blot Test, he concluded,“These people without Hitler are not abnormal, not pervert[s], not geniuses. They were like any other aggressive, smart, ambitious, ruthless businessman, and their business happened in the setting up of a world government.” Others, working with him, particularly Lieutenant Gustave Mark Gilbert who held a PhD in psychology and wanted to gather information to write a book, came to a different conclusion.
THE NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST presents a detailed picture of the detainees lives before and after Nuremberg, a description of the courtroom itself, the reaction of the Nazis to the testimony and the verdicts, It also tells what happened to each prisoner after the trial. While most of the book deals with Hermann Göring and the relationship between him and Kelley , the book presents information about each of the main defendants, the men at the higher leadership roles in the Nazi regime. For example, Julius Streicher, editor of the exceedingly anti-Jewish Der Stürmer, was considered loathsome, a pariah among the other prisoners. He had a reputation as a sadist, rapist, and collector of pornography. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, had only an elementary school education and had worked in the liquor business previously. Kelley questioned whether Hess’s amnesia was real, faked, or somewhere in between (had been faked then turned real) but was able to show he was capable to stand trial.
The book also states that Hitler had gastrointestinal disorders for more than twenty years though no organic cause was ever found by doctors. Because of that, he feared death and acted impulsively. He believed he had stomach cancer and “turned his attention from successful assaults on Great Britain to a campaign in the east that resulted in defeat.”
There were three suicides among the detainees, two by hanging before the trial and one, Göring’s by swallowing a cyanide capsule the night before he was to be hung.
After Kelley returned to the United States, Kelley was urged to write, but he wanted to get away from the detentions and trial. Eventually, did write about his experiences and examination as well as taught and trained law enforcement personnel. His family life was extremely complex with him alternating between kindness and vicious enforcer. He and his wife had major arguments and his children never knew how he would react to anything. He refused to see a psychiatrist because he didn’t want to appear weak before a peer since he was an expert in the field. He was excessively strict with his children, especially his oldest son, because he wanted to train him to not act like the Germans did. He was to be observant and analytical. His son began thinking of killing his father when he was seven years old.
Based on his interpretation of their psychological make-up and trying to answer his original questions about why the Nazis acted as they did, Kelley said. “Unbridled ambition, weak ethics, and excessive patriotism that could justify nearly any action of questionable rightness.” They were “Not monsters, evildoing machines, or automata without soul and feelings.”
He wrote 22 Cells “to influence the thinking of the American people and hoped readers would understand the qualities that allowed a group of men to dominate a country and let them believe they had the right to do so....That America could become Germany.”
Some of the Nazi prisoners compared Germany to the United States and it’s racial bigots and ultranationalists, such as white supremacists Senator Theodore Bilbo, Congressman John E. Rankin, Governor Eugene Talmadge and Huey Long. To prevent people with personalities similar to the Nazis from gaining control of the US, “Kelley advocated:

removing all restrictions on the voting rights of US citizens, convincing as many Americans as possible to vote in elections, and rebuilding the educational system to cultivate students who could think critically and resist using ‘strong emotional reactions’ to make decisions. Finally, he urged his countrymen to refuse to vote for any candidate who made ‘political capital’ of any group’s race and religious beliefs or referred indirectly or directly to the blood, heritage, or morals of opponents. ‘The United States [would] never reach its full stature’ until it has undergone this transformation

Near the end of the book, we read more of Dr. Kelley’s suicide, by cyanide capsule.
At the beginning, NAZI AND THE PSYCHIATRIST presents a list of the principle characters including their job titles. The final book will include eight pages of photos and a full bibliography which includes writings by both Dr. Kelley and Lieutenant Gilbert.
I received an advance copy this book from Goodreads.com and am very glad I had the opportunity to read it. Kelley’s comments about preventing similar experiences in other countries, quoted above, echo strongly in the US political atmosphere today.

A biography of the physician Walter Freeman, who pioneered and popularized the practice of lobotomy, eventually performing the procedure on thousands of people suffering from conditions such as depression, schizophrenia, and even chronic pain.

There's something about the very idea of a lobotomy that is deeply, viscerally, and legitimately horrifying. It is, after all, a deliberate mutilation of the human brain, the very seat of the self. Some of the descriptions here of lobotomies being performed actually made me feel slightly nauseated, not because they are gory or lurid, but because they involve such a profound and disturbing act being carried out in such a shockingly cavalier fashion.

However, as El-Hai points out without downplaying the disturbing nature of the procedure, our pop culture-based ideas about lobotomy -- mainly that it served as a means to turn difficult and uncooperative patients into drooling, docile idiots -- are significantly oversimplified. The results of the operation were highly variable, and while the outcome was sometimes disastrous, many who received the procedure went on to live reasonably normal and productive lives, which was generally (if, sadly, not always) the goal. The book also avoids oversimplification in the portrayal of Freeman, who comes across as fame-seeking, self-assured almost to the point of hubris, and more than a little reckless, but also as a fairly gifted doctor who was genuinely interested in making people better and who displayed a remarkable amount of concern for his patients long after they left his office. El-Hai seldom editorializes, instead showing us how things looked from Freeman's point of view, along with contemporaries' criticisms of his methods and occasional quotes from medical historians to put it all into perspective. It's an approach that works very well, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions and to pose for themselves the thought-provoking questions raised by this bizarre bit of medical history. And there are a great many such questions, involving ethics, philosophy, psychology, and the practice of medicine in general.

I think the strongest reaction that I came away with is an unsettling realization of just how much of the history of medicine has involved well-meaning doctors flailing around almost blindly, doing radical things to human bodies based on semi-formed hypotheses and hoping for the best. It has also reinforced my belief in the massive importance of scientific method in medicine. It may be a flawed and difficult approach, but the alternative leaves us open to possibilities such as doctors mangling patients' brains with ice picks based on little more than "it seems like it might be a good idea" and then convincing themselves with a bit of wishful thinking that they've found some kind of mental illness panacea.

Yet to read.