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The Psychiatry of Quislingism: Norwegian Psychiatric Research on the Collaborators of World War II
Abstract
Argument
The paper focuses on a research project launched by Norwegian psychiatrists immediately following World War II. The project sought to investigate the roots of quislingism (collaboration with the Nazis) through psychiatric research on the collaborators. Considered with hindsight, however, the methodology of the project seems puzzlingly shallow. The paper discusses whether this was due to a general lack of adequate methodology in the contemporaneous sciences, or whether the explanation must be sought in the project's social and historical context. Ultimately, I conclude that considerable weight must be placed on the latter explanation, and that the general political ostracism of the collaborators in the postwar years played a major role in the psychiatrists' attitude.
... Rasmussen var, som en rekke andre norske psykiatere, opptatt av at mange nazister var psykisk avvikende -en hypotese som ikke har latt seg bekrefte (27,28). ...
In 1934, senior registrar Augusta Rasmussen (1895–1979) published a study of 77 cases involving sexual offences. She found that the women involved had suffered no mental injury from the abuse. In 1947, she published a study of the intelligence level of 310 Norwegian women who had formed relationships with German soldiers during the occupation. She found that nearly all of them were more or less retarded. Her conclusions, however, were not scientifically valid. Here we present Rasmussen’s biography, academic background and scientific activity.
... У том смислу о Хитлеру, Стаљину и другим диктаторима, написане су запажене патографске студије (From 1976, Würth 2002, Adamović 1987). Занимљиво је да се чак појављују патографске студије и појединих друштвених група, које су урадили психијатри, да би објаснили, на први поглед необјашњиво понашање одређених људи у кризним историјским ситуацијама, на пример појаву квислинга у Норвешкој током ИИ светског рата (Gioever 2004). Саме патографске студије спадају, по нама, у област социологије психијатријског сазнања, а само њени резултати могу се (посредно) користити и у анализама односа између политике и психијатрије. ...
The introduction contains possible issues of the relationship between psychiatry as a profession and politics as a social phenomenon. First, the relationship between politics and the essence of mental disorder is analyzed, i.e. mental disorder is considered in the context of politics of family and governing social forces, primarily from the anti-psychiatric point of view. The article presents examples of the misuse of psychiatry by Nazism, Stalinism, and other political regimes in fighting their opponents. Examples are also offered of the abuse of psychiatry for nationalistic purposes in countries of former Yugoslavia. Certain aspects of the influence of current politics on psychiatry are also analyzed, particularly regarding the management of psychiatric institutions. Finally, the article indicates aspects of the connection between globalization as the world political trend and psychiatry as a profession in the international context. .
This article presents a typology of prison officer approaches to caring for prisoners, based on qualitative fieldwork in one men’s and one women’s prison. Five distinct approaches were identified: true carer, limited carer, old school, conflicted and ‘damaged’. Officers with each caring style shared a particular view of prisoners as a group, and varied in their adherence to traditional prison officer cultural norms. Length of experience and gender were related to caring approach, as were work environment and experience of trauma. I argue that all prison officers contended with care in their work, and I consider the personal and institutional factors that shaped the quality of care for prisoners.
Purpose of review: The purpose of this review is to highlight recent literature in the history of psychiatry. It considers publications from 2005 to 2006, as well as a few important older works that have not yet been reviewed in these pages.
Recent findings: The title of this review essay, 'Beyond Dogma and Discipline,' points toward new research that moves beyond the kind of blanket valorizations of psychiatry's past (be they pejorative or laudatory) that had become so commonplace in historiographic discourse. This review surveys new directions of historical research in several important areas (social control, community and family care, sociology of professions, psychoanalysis, nosology, psychopharmacology, and self). Recent work has focused on the multilateral and multivalent interactions of psychiatry with various neighboring disciplines and historical agents, on the integration of psychoanalysis and psychopharmacology into the history of psychiatry, and on the status of psychiatry within broader discourses about the self, identity politics, and the history of emotions.
Summary: One of the most important contributions that the recent work in the history of psychiatry has to make involves sharpening our awareness of the contingency and cultural embeddedness of psychiatric knowledge and practice across different domains of time and space.
OBJECTIVE: After the Nazi occupation, there was a determination to deal with collaborators, coming to the fore with the trial of the traitor Vidkun Quisling. This became as much a contest between psychiatrists as a legal tussle. Norwegian psychiatrists supported the public opinion that collaborationists were mentally ill or intellectually handicapped, and this was evident in the reports they prepared. CONCLUSION: Norwegian psychiatry, their distinguished stand during the war notwithstanding, was caught up in the emotion and controversy of the Quisling trial and the treatment of collaborators. Later, there was tacit agreement that their stand had been less than objective, sharing the public repulsion towards collaborators and influenced by still-prevailing eugenic views.
This review focuses on publications dealing with psychiatrists' biographies.
Compared with scientific mainstream topics in psychiatry, the present area constitutes a small but nonetheless highly heterogeneous field. The selected papers are categorized with regard to what relevance is given to biographical data in a narrow sense or to conceptual issues for which the biography of a certain author functions as an illustration. Mere hagiographic biographical notes were not taken into consideration, and nor were plain polemics. Although the differentiation mentioned above seems useful in order to get an overview, it is de facto not possible to clearly separate biographical from conceptual aspects. This may be true for all fields in the history of science, but it is definitely true in the history of psychiatry with its numerous long-standing theoretical controversies - many of them still unresolved and all of them closely linked with the lives of their prominent representatives.
The biographical approach can be helpful in proving that research on the history of psychiatry--if done beyond mere hagiography or simple polemic--is of crucial importance for the understanding and development of theoretical and practical issues in our field.
Norwegian statisticians were pioneers in the development of sampling techniques for social and economic investigations in the late nineteenth century. After a few years of extensive use of sampling surveys in large-scale social and economic investigations, the method fell out of use in the early 1900s. This article supports Alain Desrosières’ argument that the emergence of sampling procedures in social investigations must be seen in relation to a modern “individualistic” view of society. But the importance of the institutional setting is also stressed: The way statistical research was connected to the power and resources of the State within the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) was a central element in the development and implementation of the new technique. A separate argument is presented to explain why the method suddenly lost ground in Norway and the general director of the CBS stopped promoting his method in the meetings of the International Statistical Institute. The explanation is probably to be found in a large and politically important survey in the 1890s that was attacked by a group of actuaries from private insurance firms. The heated and long-lasting debate turned into a question about trust in the new method and the reputation of the head of CBS as a statistical expert. The necessary trust and confidence was lost when the CBS in 1906 had to admit that important estimates from this survey obviously were erroneous.
Of a large sample of patients with paranoid psychoses consecutively admitted to the Psychiatric Department, University of Oslo, during a period after World War II, 10 patients (6.3%, 9 women and 1 man) became ill through accusations of unpatriotic conduct during the war. The psychosis seemed precipitated in connection with legal procedures against the patient in 3 cases, and against close relatives in 2 patients. In 2 cases mixed precipitating events were present, while the psychosis in 3 cases had a connection with the woman being intimate with occupation soldiers. Discharge diagnosis according to DSM-III was schizophrenia (n = 2), schizophreniform disorder (n = 4), schizoaffective disorder (n = 1), major depressive disorder (n = 1), mania (n = 1), and atypical psychosis (n = 1). The patients have been followed up twice, with a mean 31 years of observation. Course and outcome varied, mostly according to the diagnosis. Most patients had a favorable global outcome, although they had a tendency to keep up their social isolation. None of the patients felt they had done anything wrong or regretted their behavior during the war.