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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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| Page
417 |
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416 is blank] |
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Contents |
Index |
Home
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| Introduction to Part
III |
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| The behavior of Nazi doctors suggests the beginnings of a
psychology of genocide. To clarify the principles involved, I will first focus
systematically on the psychological pattern of doubling, which was the
doctors’ overall mechanism for participating in evil. Then it is also
necessary to identify certain tendencies in their behavior, promulgated and
even demanded by the Auschwitz environment, which greatly facilitated the
doubling. This exploration is meant to serve two purposes: First, it can
provide new insight into the motivations and actions of Nazi doctors and of
Nazis in general. Second, it can raise broader questions about human behavior,
about ways in which people, individually and collectively, can embrace various
forms of destructiveness and evil, with or without the awareness of doing so.
The two purposes, in a very real sense, are one. If there is any truth to the
psychological and moral judgments we make about the specific and unique
characteristics of Nazi mass murder, we are bound to derive from them
principles that apply more widely — principles that speak to the
extraordinary threat and potential for self-annihilation that now haunt
humankind. |
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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 417 |
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