Shofar archives:
“Only in the general social-psychological literature will the reader
find discussions of the sexual obsession of the Nazis, but these
discussions, coming from scholars without specialized knowledge of
Nazi Germany, are fragmentary and only partially illuminating.<30> Nearly
all who treat this subject see it as an instance of psychic
projection. The theory of projection, advanced by Freud, postulates
that those who repress within themselves undesirable feelings and
impulses such as aggressive urges and sexual drives may seek relief
for the gnawing feeling of unconscious guilt by projecting their
illicit desires upon others and righteously attacking them, thereby
externaizing their feelings. This Freudian insight is declared to be
valid even by so skeptical a critic of psychoanalysis as H.J. Eysenck,
who summarizes it thus:
There is a tendency in people to attribute personal qualities
they themselves possess, but do not admit possessing, to other
people. Thus a person who is stingy but will not admit this to
himself will tend to attribute stinginess to others to quite
an unreasonable extent. Thus, similarly, those qualities which
the prejudiced person represses in himself tend to be projected
and attributed to other people; it is not the prejudiced person
himself but others who are seen as hostile and threatening,
or else his own weakness leads to exaggerated condemnation of
everything that is weak.”<31>
Footnotes:
30. See for example Allport, G.W., “The Nature of Prejudice,” New
York, 1958, pp. 349-355
31. Eysenck, H.J., “Uses and Abuses of Psychology,” London, 1954. P. 274
(Goldhagen, Erich. “Nazi Sexual Demonology,” Midstream, Vol. 27, No. 5,
May 1981, p. 11)
