Understanding Madmen: A DSM-IV Assessment of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler’s personality was investigated posthumously through the use of an informant version of the Coolidge Axis II Inventory (CATI), which is designed for the assessment of personality, clinical, and neuropsychological disorders. Five academic Hitler historians completed the CATI. The overall mean inter-rater correlation was moderately high for all 38 CATI scales’ T scores (median r = .72). On Axis I, the highest mean T scores across raters were Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (76), Psychotic Thinking (73) and Schizophrenia (69). On Axis II, the highest mean T scores on the CATI scales were Paranoid Personality Disorder (78), Antisocial Personality Disorder (78), Narcissistic Personality Disorder (77), and Sadistic Personality Disorder (76). Results of the present study support the reliability and preliminary validity of informant reports for psychological investigations of historical or contemporary figures. The name Adolf Hitler conjures-up images of a madman in power, Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Europe, and an evil of such magnitude that millions of Jewish people and others were subjected to unimaginable torture, terror and death. The present study attempts to evaluate posthumously Adolf Hitler’s personality according to the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Tolerance and enlightened acceptance of various peoples has been heralded as one of the major accomplishments of modern societies in the last 50 years. With this advancement, it has often been taken for granted that a leader of Hitlerian proportion could never again attain such power and influence. However, we know now that there are many who threaten world peace and stability. It is hoped that this study of Adolf Hitler’s personality (1) will be useful in understanding the role psychopathology might play in the execution of heinous acts, and (2) will establish the reliability of the informant method in the diagnosis of psychopathology. It is important to note at the outset that regardless of any inferred DSM-IV psychopathology, explanation does not equal exculpation: The present study is not intended to excuse Hitler’s actions or make him any less morally culpable. There have been many different and highly contentious theories attempting to understand Hitler and the Holocaust. The most common approach centers Hitler firmly as the cause of the Coolidge et al. / Individual Differences Research, 2007, Vol. X, No. X, pp. xx-xx 2 Holocaust. This approach is epitomized by Himmelfarb’s (1984) famous essay, “No Hitler, no Holocaust.” Himmelfarb viewed Hitler as an evil genius who started the Holocaust because of his personal will and desire to exterminate Jews. Yet within this approach, opinions run the gamut from attributing Hitler’s behavior to his psychopathology to stating firmly that Hitler was inexplicably evil. One of the first published reports of Hitler’s personality was by Carl Jung in 1939 (McGuire & Hull, 1977). In the late 1930s, Jung met and observed Hitler and Italian dictator Mussolini interact in Berlin. Jung noted that Mussolini appeared to be an “original man” who had warmth and energy, where as Jung said Hitler inspired in him only fear. During their interaction, Jung said Hitler never laughed, and it appeared as if Hitler was “in a bad humor, sulking.” Jung viewed him as sexless and inhuman, with a singleness of purpose: to establish the Third Reich, a mystical, all-powerful German nation, which would overcome all of Hitler’s perceived threats and previous insults in Germany’s history. Langer (1943/1972) provided a psychoanalytic evaluation of Hitler during WWII for the Office of Strategic Services. Using sources only available up until 1943, Langer diagnosed Hitler as a neurotic bordering on psychotic with a messiah complex, masochistic tendencies, strong sexual perversions, and a high likelihood of homosexuality. He also stated that Hitler had many schizophrenic tendencies and that the most plausible outcome for Hitler would be that he would commit suicide. Langer’s views heralded later ideas that Hitler’s primary later adult motivations may have been formed when he was hospitalized (at the age of 29) in 1918 at Pasewalk hospital in Pomerania (Germany) while serving in WWI on the Russian front. Hitler, and the troops he served with, were attacked with mustard gas. For many theorists, Pasewalk is a seminal event in the development of Hitler’s anti-Semitism and for the formation of his psychopathology. In Mein Kampf (which most scholars agree it cannot be taken as completely factual), Hitler (1925/1999) reports that on the evening of October 13, 1918, gas shells rained on them “all night more or less violently. As early as midnight, a number of us passed out, a few of our comrades forever. Toward morning I, too, was seized with pain which grew worse with every quarter hour, and at seven in the morning I stumbled and tottered back with burning eyes; taking with me my last report of the war. A few hours later, my eyes had turned into glowing coals; it had grown dark around me” (p. 202). During the next month, Hitler stated that the piercing pain in his eyes had diminished and that he could now perceive broad outlines of objects around him. He wrote that he began to believe that he would recover his eyesight well enough to work again but not well enough to be able to draw again. On November 10, Hitler reported that a pastor came to the hospital to announce that Germany would capitulate and that the German fatherland would thus be exposed to “dire oppression.” Hitler reported, “Again everything went black before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back to the dormitory, threw myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blanket and Coolidge et al. / Individual Differences Research, 2007, Vol. X, No. X, pp. xx-xx 3 pillow” (p. 204). He stated that he wept and came to the conviction that “all personal suffering vanishes in comparison with the misfortune of the fatherland” (p. 204). He wrote that he came to see that the ignominy of Germany’s defeat must be blamed on “miserable and degenerate criminals” and in Hitler’s view, it was the Jews. In the last two sentences of the chapter, he wrote: “There is no making pacts with Jews; there can only be the hard: either-or. I for my part, decided to go into politics” (p. 206). Interestingly, Langer (1943/1972) reported that Hitler had been exposed to only a “slight case of mustard gas.” Langer wrote: “It was definitely established that both the blindness and the mutism were of an hysterical nature.” (p. 175). In other words, in Langer’s view, Hitler was exaggerating or making up his symptoms. Apart from the issue of how Langer could ‘definitely’ know Hitler’s symptoms were hysterical in nature, Langer reported that Hitler’s resolutions at Pasewalk came to him in a divinely-inspired vision. Langer wrote that Hitler’s vision had told him that he had been “chosen by Providence” to accomplish a great mission. Others have called it a nervous breakdown, hysterical neurosis, hallucinatory episode, or in Hitler’s own view, a providential vision from on high (e.g., Rosenbaum, 1998). In terms of establishing Hitler’s psychopathology, the incident is crucial because one of his chief suspected diagnoses is schizophrenia, which would require evidence of hallucinations or delusions. Murray (1943/2005) also prepared a confidential psychological evaluation of Hitler for the Office of Strategic Services in October, 1943 using similar sources as Langer. Murray wrote that a thorough study of Hitler’s personality was an important contribution to psychiatry and science, in part, because he viewed a carefully documented publication of Hitler’s behavior would serve as a deterrent to other “would-be Hitlers”. Murray saw Hitler’s personality type as developing counteractively in response to overcoming early perceived disabilities and weaknesses, and to revenge his perceived humiliations, injuries, and insults to his own pride and his imagined pride of Germany. Murray thought Hitler’s overall personality fell within the “normal range” although this determination was highly qualified, that is, Murray thought Hitler exhibited all the classic symptoms of schizophrenia including paranoia and hypersensitivity, panic attacks, irrational jealousy, and delusions of persecution, omnipotence, megalomania, and “messiahship.” Murray also thought Hitler was extremely paranoid and suffered from hysterical dissociation (like Langer, Murray’s chief evidence for the later came from Hitler’s Pasewalk report in Mein Kampf. Given this bleak and frightening psychological picture, how could Hitler have risen to power and how could he not go insane? According to Murray, Hitler by 1943, had not yet gone insane, although Murray noted that Hitler’s “neurotic spells” were increasing in frequency, and he thought that Hitler’s mental powers were deteriorating since November, 1942. Furthermore, Murray made the prophetic prediction Hitler would commit suicide when German forces were faced with certain defeat because Hitler’s delusions of grandeur for Germany would be crushed. Murray also noted that Hitler managed to gain a large measure of control over his hysterical and Coolidge et al. / Individual Differences Research, 2007, Vol. X, No. X, pp. xx-xx 4 paranoid trends, using them consciously to inflame the nationalistic passions of the German people and fan hatred against its imagined persecutors. Also, by dedicating himself to a sociocentric purpose, Murray thought Hitler helped gain the support of the German people, and it allowed him to impose his will, visions, and delusions. Thus, Murray saw Hitler’s personal insane world as “real” and “insanity is sanity.” In a strong psychoanalytic framework, Fromm (1973) labeled Hitler a nonsexual necrophilous character and malignant aggressor. He viewed Hitler as having a malignant form of the anal character determined by an increase in narcissism, unrelatedness to others, and destructiveness. Fromm argued that such a tendency was always present in Hitler, but exacerbated by life circumstances, such as an authoritarian father. Characteristic of narcissism, Fromm wrote that Hitler would have had little insight into his condition and that he often blamed teachers, his father, and society for causing his early failures. Fromm also proposed that Hitler suffered from an Oedipal conflict. He believed Hitler transferred these Oedipal feelings for his mother into undying allegiance to the German nation and corresponding conflict with “her” persecutors. Hitler’s rejecting father figure, whom he “unconsciously” wished to kill, became Jewish Marxist intellectuals, and by association, all other Jews. Taylor (1961/1982) saw Hitler as responsible for the Holocaust, but minimized his psychopathology. Taylor thought Hitler a fanatic, but essentially he saw him as a conventional and highly effective statesman. In Taylor’s view, Hitler had ‘traditional’ goals, expansion of territory and political and financial influence, at least up until 1939. Numerous speeches and declarations at this time, however, revealed the depths of his German nationalism but more importantly, his revealed his blatant anti-Semitism, “We are going to destroy the Jews,” “..the Jews ..received with laughter my prophecies that I would someday achieve the leadership of the state, then, among many other things, achieve a solution of the Jewish problem” (as cited by Rosenbaum, 1998, pp. 384-385). Dawidowicz (1998) also attributed Hitler’s motivation to eliminate Jews to his hospitalization at Pasewalk. Yet, she disagreed with Taylor’s statesman’s goal for Hitler: She claims Hitler’s main goal was always to wage war but against Jews. Heston and Heston (1980) attributed Hitler’s characterological changes, particularly in the last few years of his rule, to the oral intake and injections of amphetamines. There is also a group of Holocaust theorists who, for varying reasons, believe that Hitler, although culpable for the Holocaust and evil, cannot or should not be explained. Trevor-Roper (1998) found Hitler “a frightening mystery.” Bullock (1962) wrote, “The more I learn about Hitler, the harder I find it to explain.” Rosenfeld (1985) wrote, “No representation of Adolf Hitler has seemed able to present the man or satisfactorily explain him.” Bauer stated that Hitler is not inexplicable but because something is explicable does not mean it has been explained. Fackenheim argued that Hitler is not explicable and that he stands beyond explanation. In his view, no amount of information would ever be enough. Lanzmann even goes beyond these views. Coolidge et al. / Individual Differences Research, 2007, Vol. X, No. X, pp. xx-xx 5 In his opinion, any explanation of Hitler is immoral and an obscenity (for a comprehensive review of Bauer, Fackenheim, and Lanzmann comments and others, see Rosenbaum, 1998). Mayer (1993) noted that dangerous leaders typically have apologists who discount their destructive methods in favor of viewing their behavior as consonant with “laudable” goals. Mayer attempted to develop a psychologically-based dangerous leader profile, while noting that for scientists to create such a profile does not exonerate dangerous leaders’ behavior but requires a willingness to take a stand against destructiveness and hatred. He also noted that objective psychological-behavioral criteria might promote an international consensus as to which leaders are dangerous. The latter action, Mayer argued, would be akin to identifying countries, as is done today by international consensus, which violate human rights. Mayer proposed that diagnosing mad or dangerous leaders would also offer a number of possibilities for intervention, including international containment and isolation. Mayer’s proposal for a dangerous leader disorder included three major categories of behavior: (1) indifference, manifested by murdering rivals, members of one’s family, citizens, and genocide, (2) intolerance, manifested by censoring the press, secret police, and condoning torture, and (3) grandiosity, manifested by seeing oneself as a “uniter” of people, increases in military and overestimation of military power, identification with religion/nationalism, and promulgating a grand plan. Mayer further investigated these three categories by contrasting Hitler, Stalin, and Hussein with their opponent leaders Churchill, Eisenhower, and Bush (the 41 president). He found, of course, that Hitler, Stalin, and Hussein all met far more of the criteria than their counterparts, although a “promulgating plan” was characteristic of all six leaders. A more recent and controversial approach to understanding Hitler is epitomized by Goldhagen’s (1996) contention that it was not so much Hitler’s psychopathology being responsible for the Holocaust as it was social conditions in Germany at the time of his rise to power. Goldhagen viewed Hitler as a facilitator of an irresistible force of anti-Semitism within Germany rather than a charismatic instigator. Goldhagen disagreed with Himmelfarb’s basic thesis “No Hitler, no Holocaust”, and he thought that any one like Hitler could have accomplished the same heinous acts because German society already contained the seeds of genocide from centuries of anti-Semitism. He called this particularly virulent form, eliminationist anti-Semitism. Psychological studies of Nazis, using the Rorschach, have revealed no single pathological trait (Zillmer, Harrower, Ritzler, & Archer, 1995). In a study of 21 Nuremberg defendants after World War II, the only striking similarity detected was above average to very superior intelligence, with IQs of 17 of the 21 defendants in the 95 percentile and above. In addition, over 200 Rorschachs were reviewed that had been given to German rank and file military personnel and Nazi corroborators in Denmark. Again, more differences than similarities were detected. When compared to the elite Nazis, the main divergences were education, occupation, and social Coolidge et al. / Individual Differences Research, 2007, Vol. X, No. X, pp. xx-xx 6 class, but not psychopathology. These authors asserted that we cannot be soothed with a homogenous characteristic capable of explaining the widespread allegiance to Hitler or the hope to identify a single, deranged Nazi personality type. Informant Ratings of Psychopathology Historically, clinical interviews, face-to-face psychological testing, and self-report measures have been used in psychological assessment. Of course, in the present study, a clinical interview was obviously impossible. With the increased passage of time, there are also few informants alive who directly interacted with Hitler. Thus, the present study used informants who did not directly interact with Hitler but interviewed those who did. The present informants also read the first-hand stories and reports of those who knew Hitler. Klonsky, Oltmanns, and Turkheimer (2002), in a meta-analysis of 17 personality disorder studies that included self and informant report ratings, found agreement between these different sources to range from modest (.18) to moderately high (.80). Oltmanns, Turkheimer, and Strauss (1998), in a study of personality disorder traits, also found that self-report and peer correlations tended to be modest (ranging to .30), but inter-rater agreement tended to be much stronger ranging from .48 to .89. The authors noted that self-report measures are inherently limited by the perceptions of a single rater (the self-reporter) as well as the difficulty of a person with a personality disorder to assess their own psychopathology accurately. They concluded that multiple informant ratings of personality disorders might be of potential value in the assessment of this type of psychopathology. In a study of married couples and their friends, Coolidge, Burns, and Mooney (1995) used self and informant forms of the Coolidge Axis II Inventory (CATI; Coolidge & Merwin, 1992; Coolidge, 1993; Coolidge, 1999), a measure of personality, clinical, and neuropsychological disorders and aligned with the criteria in the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Assessment targets and their spouses were found to be in greater agreement (.51) than targets and friends (.36), where as spouses and friends had moderate agreement at .41. Length of acquaintance was not significantly correlated with strength of agreement. It appears that a posthumous DSM assessment by means of informant ratings has been attempted only once. Coolidge (1999) assessed his grandmother’s personality traits 10 years after her death by using her three elder daughters (all in their 70’s) as informants. He found moderately reliable agreement among the three daughters (r = .56). In the present study, academicians who had published books or articles about Hitler were chosen to evaluate Hitler by completing the informant version of the CATI. On Axis I of the DSM-IV, it was hypothesized that Hitler would be diagnosed with schizophrenia, paranoid type. This hypothesis was based upon his frequent preoccupation with delusions of persecution (e.g., by his disapproving father, those unwilling to recognize his “talents,” and Jewish protagonists), and grandiosity (e.g., fantasies of unlimited success and recognition, his “prophesies”, etc.), his Coolidge et al. / Individual Differences Research, 2007, Vol. X, No. X, pp. xx-xx 7 early academic/interpersonal/occupational dysfunction, his extremely virulent and paranoiac delusions about Jews, and his debatable grandiose delusion at Pasewalk. Hitler’s callous disregard for human life would make it highly likely that he would be diagnosed with antisocial and sadistic personality disorders. His persistent sense of self-importance and entitlement makes it likely that he would have had a narcissistic personality disorder. His preoccupation with Jews as Germany’s antagonists and his irrational beliefs of Jewish disease contagion makes it likely he also had a paranoid personality disorder.