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| Dr Robert Jay Lifton |
THE NAZI DOCTORS:
Medical
Killing and
the
Psychology
of Genocide © |
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418 |
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Contents |
Index |
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| Chapter 19 |
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Doubling: The
Faustian
Bargain |
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Not only will you break through the paralysing difficulties of the
time you will break through time itself ... and dare to be barbaric, twice
barbaric indeed |
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— THOMAS MANN |
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Any of us could be the man who encounters his
double. |
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— FRIEDRICH DURRENMAT |
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The key to understanding how Nazi doctors came to do the
work of Auschwitz is the psychological principle I call “doubling”:
the division of the self into two functioning wholes, so that a part-self acts
as an entire self. An Auschwitz doctor could through doubling not only kill and
contribute to killing but organize silently, on behalf of that evil project, an
entire self-structure (or self process) encompassing virtually all aspects of
his behavior.
Doubling, then, was the psychological vehicle for the
Nazi doctor’s Faustian bargain with the diabolical environment in exchange
for his contribution to the killing; he was offered various psychological and
material benefits on behalf of privileged adaptation. Beyond Auschwitz was the
larger Faustian temptation offered to German doctors in general that of
becoming the theorists and implementers of a cosmic scheme of racial cure by
means of victimization and mass murder.
One is always ethically
responsible for Faustian bargains — a responsibility in no way abrogated
by the fact that much doubling takes place outside of awareness. In exploring
doubling, I engage in psychological probing on behalf of illuminating evil. For
the individual Nazi doctor in Auschwitz, doubling was likely to mean a choice
for evil. |
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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 418 |
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