Cold War Freud

Why did psychoanalysis hold such a grip on the imagination during the Cold War, and why could it be bent toward both conservative and radical goals? Dagmar Herzog argues that part of the answer lies in the way Nazism and the Holocaust forced thinkers to rethink what human beings are fundamentally like. The book also tracks how the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution, the rise of Latin American military regimes, and the growth of postcolonial societies reshaped psychoanalytic ideas.

Herzog follows how these upheavals changed the way analysts and their critics understood aggression, desire, and trauma. She looks closely at a recurring tension: whether psychoanalysis could offer a general account of human nature, or whether it was more useful as a set of tools for examining culture and power. Her account presents psychoanalysis at the height of its influence and places it as a central thread in the social and intellectual history of the twentieth century.