War, sanity, and the Nazi mind: the last passion of Joseph Jastrow.
The career of Joseph Jastrow (1863-1944) spanned more than 50 years in service to psychology. For 40 years he represented academic psychology at the University of Wisconsin as chair of the psychology department (1886 to 1927), but also was never far from popularizing psychology through books, articles, public lectures, newspaper columns, and finally radio lectures (e.g., Jastrow, 1900, 1935b). Providing a scientific and progressive psychology for the general public was always a strong penchant for Jastrow on several subjects, such as spiritualism (Jastrow, 1911) and effective living (Jastrow, 1935b). About 1939, while he was well into his 70s, his efforts focused on exposing the menace that Adolf Hitler and Nazism posed, so he undertook to enlist prominent editors to publish his work, Hitler: Mask and Myth, as articles or a book. He was not successful in gaining support for the project. His failing can be understood from the perspectives of the American market for Hitler material, the shortcomings of the manuscript, and how he represented psychology to the American public.
Penn State Lehigh Valley, 2809 Saucon Valley Road, Center Valley, PA 18034, USA. pjb4@psu.edu
Peter J
PJ
Behrens
D005197:Famous Persons; D005858:Germany; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D028683:National Socialism / Q000266:history*; D011584:Psychology / Q000266:history*; D014481:United States