Perpetrators of the Holocaust: Divided and unitary self conceptions of evildoing

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 11-33

  Waller, James E ^a  

^a Whitworth College   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0346923701     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/10.1.11     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 72-73
2. John M. Darley, "Social Organization for the Production of Evil," Psychological Inquiry, 3:2, (1992), pp. 199-218
3. As an example, initial psychological assessments of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg were based on the eventually discredited hypothesis that they were mentally ill. Israel Charny has even argued that our current classification system for psychologically abnormal behavior should be expanded to include those who commit mass murder and genocide. See Israel W. Charny, "Genocide and Mass Destruction: Doing Harm to Others as a Missing Dimension in Psychopathology," Psychiatry, 49, (1986), pp. 144-57
4. Darley, "Social Organization," p. 203
5. Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986)
6. idem., "Reflections on Genocide," Psychohistory Review, 14:3, (1986), pp. 39-54
7. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper and Row, 1974)
8. Lionel Trilling, "Lionel Trilling on Literature and Psychoanalysis," in Freud's Vienna and Other Essays, edited by Bruno Bettelheim (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 91
9. Lifton, Nazi Doctors, p. 429
10. See Albert J. Guerard's introduction to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (New York: Penguin Books, 1978)
11. and The Secret Sharer (New York: Penguin Books, 1950)
12. Madonne M. Miner, "Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick: Projection, Denial and Double-Dealing," American Imago, 47:3-4, (1990), pp. 233-48
13. Martin Amis, Time's Arrow or the Nature of the Offense (New York: Vintage International, 1991)
14. American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fourth ed., (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994), pp. 477-91
15. Lifton, Nazi Doctors
16. Lifton, "Reflections."
17. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that, in fact, the literature of clinical dissociation does include gradations from normal or everyday dissociation to extreme pathological forms; from temporary and focused adaptations to life-long patterns. As stated, the present definitional distinction refers to the extreme pathological forms of clinical dissociation
18. Robert Jay Lifton and Eric Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat (New York: Basic Books, 1990), p. 228
19. Lifton and Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality
20. Stanley Milgram, "Behavioral Study of Obedience," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, (1963), pp. 371-78
21. Milgram, Obedience
22. Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 147
23. See also James E. Waller, "Ordinary People, Extraordinary Evil: Understanding the Institutional Frameworks of Evildoing," Proteus, forthcoming
24. Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)
25. Albert Bandura, Bill Underwood, and Michael E. Fromson, "Disinhibition of Aggression Through Diffusion of Responsibility and Dehumanization of Victims," Journal of Research in Personality, 9, (1975), pp. 253-69
26. Ellen Berscheid, David Boye, and Elaine Hatfield Walster, "Retaliation as a Means of Restoring Equity," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, (1968), pp. 370-76
27. Keith E. Davis and Edward E. Jones, "Changes in Interpersonal Perception as a Means of Reducing Cognitive Dissonance," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 61, (1960), pp. 402-10
28. David C. Glass, "Changes in Liking as a Means of Reducing Cognitive Discrepancies Between Self-Esteem and Aggression," Journal of Personality, 32, (1964), pp. 531-49
29. Timothy C. Brock and Arnold H. Buss, "Dissonance, Aggression, and the Evaluation of Pain," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 65, (1962), pp. 197-202
30. Joseph T. Hepworth and Stephen G. West, "Lynchings and the Economy: A Time-Series Reanalysis of Hovland and Sears (1940)," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, (1988), pp. 239-47
31. Staub, Roots of Evil, p. 17
32. Melvin J. Lerner and Dale T. Miller, "Just World Research and the Attribution Process: Looking Back and Ahead," Psychological Bulletin, 85, (1978), pp. 1030-51
33. David G. Myers, Social Psychology third ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990)
34. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews revised and expanded edition (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985)
35. Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust (New York: Free Press, 1979)
36. Kelman and Hamilton, Crimes of Obedience
37. Haig A. Bosmajian, The Language of Oppression (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983)
38. Elizabeth Hall, "A Conversation with Erik Erikson," Psychology Today, (June, 1983), pp. 22-30
39. Bosmajian, Language, p. 29
40. Contemporary likenesses include the "free-fire zone" and "body count" from the Vietnam War; the nuclear age contributed "fallout problem" and "preemptive attack."
41. Bosmajian, Language
42. Gitta Sereny, Into That Darkness (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), p. 101
43. Henry V. Dicks, Licensed Mass Murder: A Sociopsychological Study of Some SS Killers (New York: Basic Books, 1972), p. 262
44. See Bosmajian, Language
45. Arthur L. Beaman, C. M. Cole, M. Preston, Bonnel A. Klentz, and Nancy M. Steblay, "Fifteen Years of Foot-in-the-Door Research: A Meta-Analysis," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9, (1983), pp. 181-196
46. James P. Dillard, John E. Hunter, and Michael Burgoon, "Sequential-Request Persuasive Strategies: Meta-Analysis of Foot-in-the-Door and Door-in-the-Face," Human Communication Research, 10, (1984), pp. 461-88
47. See Richard M. Perloff, The Dynamics of Persuasion (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993)
48. See Staub, Roots of Evil
49. Philip G. Zimbardo, "Pathology of Imprisonment," Transaction/Society, (1972), pp. 4-8
50. Philip G. Zimbardo, "The Psychological Power and Pathology of Imprisonment," A statement prepared for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee No. 3: Hearings on Prison Reform, San Francisco, CA, 25 October 1971, p. 3
51. Melanie R. Trost, Robert B. Cialdini, and Anne Maass, "Effects of an International Conflict Simulation on Perceptions of the Soviet Union: A FIREBREAKS Backfire," Journal of Social Issues, 45:2, (1989), pp. 139-58
52. See Perloff, Dynamics of Persuasion
53. Ruth Thibodeau and Elliot Aronson, 'Taking a Closer Look: Reasserting the Role of the Self-Concept in Dissonance Theory," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, (1992), pp. 591-602
54. See Alice H. Eagly and Shelly Chaiken, The Psychology of Attitudes (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993)
55. Daryl J. Bern, "Self-Perception Theory," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, ed. by Leonard Berkowitz (San Diego: Academic Press, 1972), pp. 1-62
56. See Eagly and Chaiken, Psychology of Attitudes
57. Claude M. Steele, "The Psychology of Self-Affirmation: Sustaining the Integrity of the Self," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology vol. 21, ed. by Leonard Berkowitz (San Diego: Academic Press, 1988), pp. 261-302
58. Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany 1933-1945 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), p. 27
59. Mika Haritos-Fatouros, "The Official Torturer: A Learning Model for Obedience to the Authority of Violence," Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, (1988), pp. 1107-20
60. Myers, Social Psychology, p. 46
61. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 161
62. Milgram, Obedience, p. 132
63. Lifton's interpretation reminds us that these responses must be translated because of the doctors' need to justify themselves and their actions in the eyes of others and in their own
64. See Franklin H. Littell's review of Ordinary Men, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7:1, (1993), p. 123
65. James E. Waller, "Professing Psychology: Great Questions and Greater Opportunities," (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Psychological Association, Kona, HI, 1994)
66. Christopher R. Browning, personal communication with author, 8 June 1994