Walter Charles Langer
Walter Charles Langer (born February 5, 1899 in Boston , † July 4, 1981 in Sarasota , Florida) was an American psychoanalyst in Cambridge , Massachusetts. Langer owes his fame primarily to his collaboration in a psychological study of Adolf Hitler , which the intelligence service of the US War Department, the Office of Strategic Services , commissioned in 1943.
Life
Langer's parents were the German immigrants Charles Rudolph and Johanna Rockenbach Langer. Langer had two older brothers: the mathematician Rudolph Ernest Langer ( University of Wisconsin ) and the historian William L. Langer ( Harvard University ).
During the First World War , Langer served as a soldier in the United States Army in France. He then studied at Harvard, where he graduated in 1923. In the 1930s he studied in Vienna with Anna Freud , who also analyzed him . Langer had frequent contact with her father Sigmund Freud and also accompanied him on his journey into exile (1938). Langer worked as a resident psychoanalyst from the late 1930s to around 1960 .
On behalf of General William J. Donovan, head of the OSS, Langer made a psychological study of Adolf Hitler in 1943 . The starting point of this work were interviews with numerous people who were available to the American secret services and who had met Hitler personally. Langer predicted in the study, among other things, that Hitler would commit suicide. The study was published as a book in 1972 under the title The Mind of Adolf Hitler .
See also
Scientific work
- A Psychological Profile of Adolph Hitler. His Life and Legend . The original version is available online here through the Nizkor Project .
- The Mind of Adolf Hitler. The Secret Wartime Report , Basis Books, 1972, ISBN 0465046207 ; German edition: The Adolf Hitler Psychogram: an analysis of himself and his behavior, written in 1943 for the psychological warfare of the USA. Molden, Munich, 1982, ISBN 3-217-00530-9 .
literature
- Daniel Pick : The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind: Hitler, Hess, and the Analysts . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York City 2012
Web links
- Walter Langer is dead at 82; wrote secret study of Hitler , New York Times , July 10, 1981
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Langer, Walter Charles |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American psychoanalyst |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 5, 1899 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Boston |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th July 1981 |
| Place of death | Sarasota , Florida |