A short interview, by Gene Santoro for HistoryNet.com, with the eminent Professor Sir Ian Kershaw. Debunks some of the common myths surrounding Hitler & The Third Reich.
Link to interview (outside THF network).
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I hope someone will pass this on to Ian Kershaw. I would like him to investigate what a narcissist is and look at Hitler from that point of view. I worked for one, know it from direct painful experience, and I see very much in my reading on Hitler, for example. that Bulloch and Toland did not quite get it re narcissism's importance. Elements are there. They could not identify it however as a major source of influence. The knowledge of NPD was not there or understood for them to draw on.
ReplyDeleteI think Kershaw knew more but left it to psychiatrists to discuss this area, so he refers to it, but does not examine it as the controlling aspect of Hitler's life. I see by his comments that he sees part of it but I am not sure he appreciated or gave NPD's dominance the attention it deserves.
If you understand that narcissistic personality disorder fully controls one's life, I think it raises a much simpler understanding of why Hitler was what he was and why.
The illness controlled him. He was not controlled as historians would say, by what I would describe, as personality traits or will. Hitler was controlled by what were the definable and recognizable activities of a narcissist playing out his life as dictated by his unknown-to-self illness.
So I think the thread of his NPD can be made the major factor in Hitler's life and eventually can be seen as the most significant root cause of what Hitler was and why events occurred as they subsequently did.
Thank you, Ken