Daniel Pick

In the which the author, who is both a psychoanalyst and a historian, examines the history of how the American and British governments tried to harness psychology and psychiatry to understand the Nazi government. The real core of this book is the how Henry Dicks, a medical officer in the British Army and a noted psychiatric practitioner, was assigned Rudolf Hess as a patient in the wake of the sensational arrival of the Nazi personage in Britain and what Dicks made of his charge. Apart from show more that you have consideration of topics such as how the OSS made use of psychological medicine (resulting in the report that became "The Mind of Adolf Hitler"), the legacy of such work and the critique by the historical profession of "psychohistory" as an endeavor. show less

The book wasn't bad, I'm just not interested in psychoanalysis as a therapeutic method or cognitive theory. The first few chapters were fine, it explained mainstream psychoanalysis. The later chapters delved into the specific different schools of psychoanalysis that arose and discussed their differences and history; it was really boring and I pretty much completely skipped it.