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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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433 |
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| The Auschwitz Self: Psychological
Themes |
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“its possessor may have to meet the hard condition
that once he can use his special talent he must do so, or the power he. does
not choose to wield may turn against his own life.”15 In psychological terms, we may say that the
backed-up power so threatening to its possessor is the potential sense of
guilt, which can be fended off only by continuous application of that lethal
power outward to an enemy. That same principle was active in the Nazi claim
that every single Jew had to be killed, lest those remaining alive or their
children kill Germans. The Auschwitz self, then, entered into a vicious circle
of killing, threatened guilt and death anxiety, and more killing to fend off
those perceived psychological threats.
From the standpoint of
maintaining the healing-killing paradox, the doctor’s conduct of
selections “made it perfect” (in Dr. B.’s phrase)
bureaucratically (and therefore psychologically) because it conveyed the idea
that “an exact medical judgment had been made.” But that very
medicalization required the Auschwitz self to take on the physician’s
self-requirement of “how to carry out the matter [killing]
humanely.” That principle of “humane killing” could take on
considerable power for the Auschwitz self: sending typhus patients or potential
carriers to the gas chamber did control that disease, and doing the same to
large numbers of weak and sick prisoners did indeed improve the hygienic
situation in Auschwitz. If one entered into the healing-killing paradox with a
comprehensive Auschwitz self, it could seem to make sense, to “work”;
and that in turn buttressed the overall doubling process.
Strong
healing tendencies could readily lead to conflict in an SS doctor, to a
situation in which his Auschwitz self was less than fully dominant. But, in the
great majority of cases, that conflict was sufficiently overcome after the
transition period for the doctor to do the work of the camp and for the
Auschwitz self to become adequately functional. That was very much
Wirths’s situation, as we know, and it was true also of men like Rohde,
who was said to drink heavily and was described as experiencing “a problem
of conscience” to the point of discharging a gun on one occasion out of
frustration and anger — but who nonetheless “did exactly the same
things as the others,” that is, went on doing selections. The healing
ethos fights a losing battle if it fights at all, as the Auschwitz self takes
over. When telling us how an SS doctor “after a few weeks in this
environment … thinks, ‘Yes,’” B. was describing not a
sudden epiphany but rather the end point of a process, brief and intense
enough, in which the Auschwitz self progressively took hold.
That is
why the Hippocratic oath, though a pledge to remain a healer and to disavow
killing or harming those one treats, was all but abandoned in Auschwitz. The
oath was perceived as little more than a distant and muted ritual one had
performed at medical school graduation, and was readily reversed by the
searingly immediate selections ritual, as well as by the array of direct
pressures and rewards in the direction of a Hippocrates-free Auschwitz self.
Indeed, with the oath to Hitler one essentially excluded the Jews from
one’s Hippocratic responsibilities. |
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THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical Killing and the
Psychology of
Genocide
Robert J. Lifton
ISBN 0-465-09094
©
1986 |
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Page 433 |
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