BOOKS
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By assuming that one genocide is just as good as any other Dr.
Lifton can conclude that "no individual self is inherently evil , mur–
derous, genocidal," that "numbing can lead to amoral self-process ,"
and that "Germans have no monopoly on evil self-processes." He may
well be correct. But by emphasizing the similarity of (fairly superficial)
psychological processes which were activated in
all
the inhabitants of
the death camps, Dr. Lifton underplays the differences between in–
trapsychic mechanisms of fearful and terrorized victims, and those
of omnipotent and powerful executioners. And he minimizes the un–
mitigated power of the Nazis' political machinery, whose power over
these doctors he so excellently documents.
In the end , Richard Plant's book is a courageous effort expos–
ing prejudice against both Jews and homosexuals: he escaped from
Frankfurt before the round-ups, and felt he had to bear witness . Dr.
Lifton's much more substantive book, I think, is marred by being bent
to its author's pacifist aims . By focussing on a psychology of genocide,
rather than on its politics, or on the sheer terror under which every–
one existed, he believes he can use the Nazi doctors as lessons in order
to caution us against nuclear disaster. Had he limited himself to his
subject alone, I would have nothing but praise for his inordinate ef–
forts. As it is, I must fault him for having employed the Holocaust to
further his own political views.
EDITH KURZWEIL
THE INTERPRETATION OF FREUD
FREUD: AN INTRODUCTION TO HIS LIFE AND WORKS. By
J.
N. Is·
blster.
Polity Press/Basil Blackwell, Inc. $8.95.
In recent years there has been a steady increment of writ–
ings about Freud and psychoanalysis from a far-flung assortment of
institutional and/or intellectual outposts. The latest addition to what
has become an intellectual industry is J . N . Isbister's sizeable and
handsomely fashioned book, which is to be greeted therefore as part
of the normal flow of cultural reproduction, as a new generation of
students comes forward to be introduced to a complex figure and
subject through the focus created by a selective reading of the latest
generation of scholarly research and interpretation. Unfortunately,
