Overview

How could the Holocaust have happened? How can people do such things to other people? Questions such as these have animated discussion of the Holocaust from our earliest awareness of what had happened. These questions have engaged the lay public as well as academics from many different fields. Psychologists have taken an active role in trying to understand and explain the motivation, thinking, and behavior of all those involved in and affected by the Holocaust. The present volume is, in part, an attempt to provide a kind of historical roadmap to the diverse psychological explanations and interpretations that have been developed by psychologists over the last several decades. While many psychological discussions of the Holocaust dismiss or diminish the significance of work that antedates the Milgram obedience experiments in the early 1960s, this book engages some of these earlier formulations in detail. It strives to be, in this sense, a more complete history of psychological thought on the Holocaust. As many psychologists now accept the idea that a comprehensive psychology of the Holocaust must include more than social influence, the book addresses the question, ""What, then?"" The answer can be found by looking both backward and forward in time. Gordon Allport's 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice remains one of the best psychological attempts to grapple with the Holocaust written, though that was not its primary purpose. In this volume, the reader will find both echoes of Allport and new ideas for ways psychologists can engage this profoundly important subject.

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9780190638269

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Reviews

"""At once a riveting critical history of the discipline of psychology and a masterful nuanced analysis of the most important psychological theories about Nazism and the Holocaust, Of Mind and Murder is consistently lucid and hugely informative. The deleterious consequences of long-term exposure to lies, the role of threatened narcissism, the impact of prejudice and the management of cognitive dissonance, the routinization of cruelty and the self-interested distortions of memory: all of these issues remain painfully urgent, and Mastroianni's book provides a superb, indispensable guide."" -- Dagmar Herzog, Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes ""This book is a magnificent gift to social science. The author provides the first genuinely thorough analysis of the Holocaust from both psychological and historical perspectives. The overarching coverage and amount of scholarly detail are extremely informative, particularly given the raging controversies that have continued to permeate these literatures for decades. The author pays deserving homage to classic earlier treatments, e.g., Gordon Allport's The Nature of Prejudice (1954), as well to very recent critiques, e.g., the role of Adolf Eichmann in the Holocaust, by Cesarani (2007) and Stangneth (2014). Arendt's thesis on the banality of evil and the familiar linkage between Milgram's obedience studies and the Holocaust are put under an intense analytical microscope by the author, as is the Browning-Goldhagen debate. More generally, the author provides an illuminating examination of both the indispensable need to include both history and psychology in an effort to understand the Holocaust, as well as the constraining obstacles one faces in attempting this kind of inclusive perspective. This book is far more, however, than a reprise of long- standing research and scholarly disagreements. There is both provocative analysis but also a bold synthesis in this work. Mastroiannni's masterful analysis and discussion become, in my view, an instant benchmark for all future Holocaust references in social science."" -- Arthur G. Miller, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Miami University"

At once a riveting critical history of the discipline of psychology and a masterful nuanced analysis of the most important psychological theories about Nazism and the Holocaust, Of Mind and Murder is consistently lucid and hugely informative. The deleterious consequences of long-term exposure to lies, the role of threatened narcissism, the impact of prejudice and the management of cognitive dissonance, the routinization of cruelty and the self-interested distortions of memory: all of these issues remain painfully urgent, and Mastroianni's book provides a superb, indispensable guide. -- Dagmar Herzog, Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes This book is a magnificent gift to social science. The author provides the first genuinely thorough analysis of the Holocaust from both psychological and historical perspectives. The overarching coverage and amount of scholarly detail are extremely informative, particularly given the raging controversies that have continued to permeate these literatures for decades. The author pays deserving homage to classic earlier treatments, e.g., Gordon Allport's The Nature of Prejudice (1954), as well to very recent critiques, e.g., the role of Adolf Eichmann in the Holocaust, by Cesarani (2007) and Stangneth (2014). Arendt's thesis on the banality of evil and the familiar linkage between Milgram's obedience studies and the Holocaust are put under an intense analytical microscope by the author, as is the Browning-Goldhagen debate. More generally, the author provides an illuminating examination of both the indispensable need to include both history and psychology in an effort to understand the Holocaust, as well as the constraining obstacles one faces in attempting this kind of inclusive perspective. This book is far more, however, than a reprise of long- standing research and scholarly disagreements. There is both provocative analysis but also a bold synthesis in this work. Mastroiannni's masterful analysis and discussion become, in my view, an instant benchmark for all future Holocaust references in social science. -- Arthur G. Miller, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Miami University

""At once a riveting critical history of the discipline of psychology and a masterful nuanced analysis of the most important psychological theories about Nazism and the Holocaust, Of Mind and Murder is consistently lucid and hugely informative. The deleterious consequences of long-term exposure to lies, the role of threatened narcissism, the impact of prejudice and the management of cognitive dissonance, the routinization of cruelty and the self-interested distortions of memory: all of these issues remain painfully urgent, and Mastroianni's book provides a superb, indispensable guide."" -- Dagmar Herzog, Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes ""This book is a magnificent gift to social science. The author provides the first genuinely thorough analysis of the Holocaust from both psychological and historical perspectives. The overarching coverage and amount of scholarly detail are extremely informative, particularly given the raging controversies that have continued to permeate these literatures for decades. The author pays deserving homage to classic earlier treatments, e.g., Gordon Allport's The Nature of Prejudice (1954), as well to very recent critiques, e.g., the role of Adolf Eichmann in the Holocaust, by Cesarani (2007) and Stangneth (2014). Arendt's thesis on the banality of evil and the familiar linkage between Milgram's obedience studies and the Holocaust are put under an intense analytical microscope by the author, as is the Browning-Goldhagen debate. More generally, the author provides an illuminating examination of both the indispensable need to include both history and psychology in an effort to understand the Holocaust, as well as the constraining obstacles one faces in attempting this kind of inclusive perspective. This book is far more, however, than a reprise of long- standing research and scholarly disagreements. There is both provocative analysis but also a bold synthesis in this work. Mastroiannni's masterful analysis and discussion become, in my view, an instant benchmark for all future Holocaust references in social science."" -- Arthur G. Miller, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Miami University

Author Information

George Mastroianni was trained as an experimental psychologist and conducted empirical research in a variety of areas related to human performance as an Army scientist. He taught a variety of subjects in psychology at the US Air Force Academy in twenty years of classroom teaching, and now teaches leadership in the Psychology of Leadership Program at Pennsylvania State University.

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