Therapeutic Fascism: Experiencing the Violence of the Nazi New Order

277 Pages·2016·3.174 MB·English

by  Antić, Ana

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OXFORD STUDIES
IN MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY
General Editors
simon dixon, mark mazower,
and
james retallack
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Therapeutic Fascism
Experiencing the Violence of the Nazi New Order
in Yugoslavia
ANA ANTIĆ
1
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3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Ana Antić 2017
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2017
Impression: 1
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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935564
ISBN 978–0–19–878458–6
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
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To my parents
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Acknowledgments
This book started out as a PhD dissertation, completed at Columbia University in
2012. It has been in the making for a long time and, as a result, numerous people
have had tremendous impact on its shape and content. At Columbia, Mark
Mazower showed amazing patience and support as I endlessly struggled to formu-
late my questions, make sense of challenging sources and carve out a novel research
area for myself. He offered invaluable brainstorming sessions, read some rather
half-baked chapter drafts with much more generosity than they deserved, and
helped me express my ideas with more coherence and logical rigour than I would
have done. Without his kindness, guidance, and infectious intellectual irreverence,
this book would never have come to life. Many other people at Columbia provided
precious advice and help at various stages of writing. I particularly thank Volker
Berghahn and his German history reading group, Victoria de Grazia, Brad Abrams,
and Deborah Cohen for their time, dedication, and suggestions. I am also very
grateful to Elizabeth Lunbeck for her willingness to take part in my PhD project;
her approach to writing the history of psychiatry has remained an inspiration, and
our conversations about the field and my possible contributions to it helped me
immensely to clarify my own ideas. Many colleagues and friends from the field of
Balkan and East European history, such as Jared Manasek, Emily Greble, and
James Frusetta, selflessly shared their expertise and sharp insights. My numerous
research trips were generously funded by the Harriman Institute, DAAD, The
Wellcome Trust, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
In the past three years, I had an amazing opportunity to work as a post-doctoral
research fellow on the Wellcome-funded project “Reluctant Internationalists” at
Birkbeck College, University of London. I will forever cherish the friendship and
intellectual companionship I had found under the auspices of this research group,
where I completed my manuscript revisions but also made that terrifying first step
into a new, post-PhD research area. Jessica Reinisch, the project’s leader, gener-
ously offered to read different versions of the chapters and provided extremely
insightful feedback. I am very grateful to her and the other members of the team:
Dora Vargha, Johanna Conterio-Geisler, David Brydan, and Francesca Piana, for
commenting on drafts and ideas and for the many fruitful, challenging and enjoy-
able conversations on East European, international and medical history. The
History Department at Birkbeck was a wonderful academic home, and I thank
Daniel Pick, Joanna Bourke, and Marcie Holmes in particular for their careful
reading and extremely helpful suggestions and criticisms.
I have also been very lucky to have had Robert Faber as my commissioning
editor at OUP; I am very thankful for his confidence in my ability to produce a
proper book manuscript out of a PhD thesis, and for his guidance, patience, and
kindness. I also thank his team, and Cathryn Steele in particular, for their unfailing
professionalism and dedication. OUP has made this a truly enjoyable and rewarding
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viii Acknowledgments
experience throughout. The three anonymous reviewers provided careful and con-
structive criticism, and their suggestions improved and clarified the manuscript
immensely. Any remaining errors are, of course, entirely my own.
In my personal life, there are more people than I can name here, who remained
a constant source of encouragement and emotional stability. I thank them for their
willingness to put up with my obsessions, long absences, and occasional lack of
focus. I’m grateful to Carl for his affection and intellectual companionship, which
made the final stages of writing this book much more bearable. Finally, my parents
have always provided absolute and unconditional support, and believed in my
choices without questioning them. My father, unfortunately, did not live to see
this book published, but I can imagine how proud he would have been if he did.
Both his and my mother’s determination, honesty, empathy, and social awareness
have fundamentally shaped me as a writer and a historian, and this book is dedi-
cated to them.
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Contents
List of Illustrations xi
Map: Dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1941 xiii
Introduction 1
1. Reading Psychiatric Case Histories 27
2. Change of Paradigm 63
3. Politics in the Files 97
4. Fascism and Psychoanalysis: “Re-educating” the Communists 143
5. Heroes and Hysterics 186
Epilogue. After the War: Adjusting to Socialism 226
Conclusion 238
Bibliography 247
Index 259