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The Third Reich of dreams: The nightmares of a nation, 1933-1939 by Charlotte Beradt & Bruno Bettelheim (1968))
, 17 Oct 2020
I came across this book thanks to an article in the New Yorker and an interview with the psychotherapist Martha Crawford (who has recently carried out a research project on Trump dreams) in which she quotes this book as a source of inspiration.
This is a terrific book that feels as fresh and poignant as ever. The book covers the period that precedes WW2. Many of these dreams came to light before the racial laws, persecution, denigration and killing of Jews started.
The book is short and fascinating, but not an easy read by any means. The dreams Beradt selected are really interesting, most of them very expressive.
Dream Reports.
Charlotte Beradt was a German Jewish journalist. After the Nazis got in power, she was forbidden to publish anything. Besides, she was arrested during the first mass detentions of Communists carried out in Germany. After her release, she started gathering dream reports. By 1939, she had gathered dreams from more than 300 people. I am not sure whether that equals to 300 dreams, as The New Yorker says, because that is not stated in the book, or at least in the edition I've read. In fact, Beradt mentions that some of the dreamers had recurrent dreams about a certain subject, so I guess the volume was higher than 300 dreams.
She gathered some of them by candidly asking people about their dreams. Others were obtained through friends, especially thru a doctor friend who asked his patients during consultation. The dreamers came from different social backgrounds, had different ages and gender, and were both Jews and non-Jews. A common denominator was the deep impact that the dream had had in them.
After writing the dreams and changing leading Nazi leaders' names to coded family-like names, she hide the transcripts inside the binding of her personal books. When the burning of books and home intrusions began in Germany, Beradt mailed her notes to friends overseas.
Publication.
During WW2, in 1943, the magazine Free World published a small selection of 'her' dreams titled, "Dreams Under Dictatorship". Beradt says in her book that the time circumstances prevented her from evaluating all the material. She published the book in German in 1966 and in English in 1968. She recognizes the advantage of having delayed the publication. By the time she started the book, a good amount of archival and historical information was ready available, something that helped her to better contextualize the dreams she had gathered.
Types of Dreams.
Each chapter deals with a type of dream reaction to the then current political situation. Several types of dreams can be clearly distinguished.
Propaganda Dreams.
Political propaganda and Nazi imagery start to 'infect' dreams and appear as specific dream motifs -- banners, posters, media messages and tones. Dreamers begin to feel that life is losing its joy.
Spied-on Dreams.
Dreams involving household objects that record the dreamers' voice or thoughts at home, for the regime to spy on them. Some dreamers would censor themselves in the dream so that they couldn't be spied, even if it is by speaking in images or languages they don't even understand; this was not a dream ego's decision, but an unconscious decision.
Unable-to-Speak Dreams.
In these dreams, dreamers are reluctant or unable to speak their truth when there are Nazi people in the dream. Another person, usually a foreigner, comes forward and speaks their mind, replicating the dreamer's thoughts.
Dissociative Dreams.
The dreamer wants to dissociate from Jewish family members, friends or love interests, even if they had just a tiny amount of Jewish blood. The regime's pressure invades and pervades their dreams, so the dreamer feels that there is nothing one can do but to comply.
Wrong-Race Dreams.
Dreamers, in their dreams, would be marginalized, confronted or punished for having physical features that weren't those belonging to the "superior" race -- Nordic traits, white skin, and blond hair. In this group, Beradt also includes dreams of dreamers suffering the same treatment not because of their race, but because they adhered to ideologies that weren't that of National Socialism.
Resistance Dreams.
Dreams from people who offered active resistance to the regime. Their dreams clearly reflect their waking life attitudes. They take action, and neither parodied, morphed or degraded themselves to conform, fit in or hide.
Wishy-Washy Dreams.
In these dreams, the dreamer has a readiness to deceive and construct alibis for oneself while getting closer and moving towards the dominant force, people and ideology. That is, there is an ambivalence between not liking what is occurring in the dream, or the people in the dream, but also longing for being part of that very group or situation they dislike. 'I don’t have to always say no anymore” summarises well this attitude of belonging.
Pals-with-Hitler Dreams.
The dreamer is friends with or advisor of Hitler, Goering, or Goebbels. Beradt says that these dreams clearly show the connection between power and the erotic. They seem to be more prominent in women, replicating the pro-Hitler voting patterns of women. By the way, these dreams came from people who weren't part of the system or didn't desire to submit to it.
The Jews' Dreams.
Their dreams dealt with problems of disorientation, depersonalization, loss of identity, continuity, emigration, nostalgia, and fear of losing one's mother tongue, among others. Fear and anxiety pervade them. More than any other dreamers, Jews were able to recognize the aims and principles of totalitarianism and foresee their consequences. Their dreams ring prophetic in retrospect and have a dream imagery with an almost-naturalistic clairvoyance. These dreams had dramatic events involving passports, visas and personal documents.
Nuggets.
Feelings.
The totalitarian regime produced alienation, isolation, loss of identity, dislocation, and feeling of not being able to psychologically escape the horror, even when the dreamers had already flown Germany.
We witness dreamers' anxiety, helplessness, and near absence of wish to fight back. This is so because totalitarian systems build on people's inner anxiety. At its turn, this anxiety prevents one from directing his/her resentment towards the source that generates it, and deflect it to people or situations that aren't the source of their suffering.
The dreams that reflected the dreamer's anxiety about being dark-haired or dark-skinned echo the Afro-American's attitudes toward their own skin. (It clearly shows in a speech that Lupita Nyongo gave speaking about her feelings of inadequacy about her skin colour and her beauty.) That is, they felt that there was something undesirable within them; this feeling opened them to psychological defeat as those who saw things that way took advantage of that.
The Unconscious.
The Nazi regime destroyed the healthy balance between submission and self-assertion. It invaded and controlled the deepest most private recesses of the mind until, even in the unconscious, only submission remained.
Dreamers had the unconscious need to purge their own unconscious mind of any desire to fight back, of any belief that rebellion can succeed, as any expression of hatred or resistance endangered one's life.
To the personal unconscious the cost of fighting for freedom against the regime is too high, so it considers bondage and submission a better option. That's the case even in the dreams of people who believed that they could still salvage some things.
Weaknesses.
Totalitarian regimes succeed because they aggravate people's inner weaknesses, feed on them, depriving people from the strength to fight back.
When a dictatorship establishes itself in the paternal position, it starts treating everyone as an incompetent child. Even more, everyone unconsciously assumes that that's their position. The result is a regression in the person's unconscious to the infantile stance, which further favours their manipulation and control.
If people had been unequivocally clear about their alliance or rejection of the Nazis, there wouldn't have been room for inner conflict. People in the resistance clearly stood up against the Nazis in their dreams, and their unconscious didn't show any hesitance, conflict or double alliance.
Epilogue.
Bettleheim's Layer.
The epilogue is an essay by the then prestigious (now infamous) Austrian psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, a Jewish who was in two concentration camps but was lucky enough to survive. Beradt wasn't a psychologist, so Bettelheim commentary offers an extra layer of analysis an sums up things for the reader quite well. He's able to explain how dictatorship does to destroy people's uniqueness, inner resistance, and how it reverts adult consciousness. Using Berad'st dreams he also explains how totalitarianism can turn people into alienated fearful unconscious psychological pawns at the regime's service.
At times, Bettleheim shows a patronising attitude towards Beradt, something that I didn't like at all.
Concentration Camps Dreams.
He compares Beradt's selected dreams and dreamer's attitudes with those that the Jews in concentration camps had. Bettelheim says:
"The concentration camp prisoner hardly ever dreamt about the dangers that stalked him, nor about persecution by the Nazis. (...) There was no more struggle in the unconscious between the wish to be oneself and the wish to give in to the Nazis, for most of what mattered had already been destroyed. (...) Most of their dreams were of the good times they had had or were going to have—reassuring themselves that the nightmare of the camps was not permanent. Others were dreams of escape or revenge. (...). We know of the dreams of resistance fighters (...) Hardly any of them were about forcing oneself to obey the enemy by suppressing one's will".
Premonitions.
Bettelheim explains the prophetic and premonitory nature of many of the dreams presented in the book as a natural phenomenon. They are a wise guess/reading of the subconscious, which clearly foresees what the situation is, and where things are heading.
The 'It' Question.
He makes the million-dollar question,"If all of us abhorred the Third Reich, why did it exist? Must there not have been feelings, unknown to our conscious mind, that condoned it, accepted it, willed it? Even among those who lived in fear and trembling of the Nazis, might there not have been in them somewhere, deep down, a layer of soul closely kin to that regime of terrible domination?" Although his comments seems a bit insensitive and confronting, they are actually a reflection on what Jung called the Shadow, the collective version of it.
My Thoughts.
Freshness.
This book feels fresh despite the many decades elapsed since Beradt wrote it. In the current times of revival of extremism, fascism and populism, this book is a powerful reminder of how totalitarian regimes can easily mince and amalgamate our individual psyche into a mass of nothingness.
Methodology.
The fact that Beradt and/or her friends transcribed the dreams and not always the dreamer, poses some methodological questions. Were all the reports reliable and trustworthy? Did Beradt & Co. transfer psychological personal stuff into their transcriptions?
Complex Language.
Beradt and Bettleheim's political and psychological analysis is excellent. However, the language they use is sometimes complex, and many lay readers might struggle with the authors' digressions.
No Beradt or Bettleheim's Dreams.
Beradt was a Jew and lived in Germany in the period of her study. Why didn't she share any of her dreams? Were her dreams disguised in the book? I would have loved her comments on how the regime affected her personal dream world.
Bettleheim speaks about the dreams of Jews in concentration camps. However, he neither mentions anything personal. Perhaps what he says refers to himself, but I would have loved something more explicit coming from him because he had first-hand experience.
No Nazis' Dreams.
I agree with Bettleheim that it would have been good collecting dreams from the Nazis, their supporters, or those who didn't mind the regime, and then compare them with those presented in the book. However, one cannot expect Beradt to collect them because she was a prosecuted Jew and it would have not been wise to approach Nazi sympathizers and ask them about their dreams.
A study of this type would be really revealing. It would give us a glimpse into the collective unconscious overall, and what really created the monster. Were the regime's sympathizers also secretly resisting? Did they feel superior in their dreams? Did this people's dreams show fear of the Jews? Of the Nazis? Was their dream world much different from the non-supporters?
Nightmares or Bad Dreams?
Despite the title, there is no clear statement in the book about whether the dreams commented on were true nightmares, bad dreams or normal dreams with bad stories. We just know that some of them were recurrent and distressing. This differentiation is important to evaluate the real impact they had in the dreamer's life, and to see where the trauma sat, in which stage the trauma was.
Belonging.
I am not sure whether the best-pals-with-Hitler dreams are solely a reflection of the eroticism of power. I'd say that, if you are in danger because a bully wants to hurth you, you would secretely wish to be friends with them so that you wouldn't be attacked. Besides, you would not understand why you you were being singled out and bullied, so it would be just natural wishing that they knew how lovely you are, and accept you for who you are, so their peers woud also see it. I also think that the transparency myth might be playing a role here. One expect well-manered warm passionate people to be good, not a killing monster.
Identity Papers.
Dreams revolving about passports and visas are common among immigrants, even if they live in a democracy. Yet, the dream motif rightly points out to how strongly our identity and our papers are linked in the modern world.
Social Dreaming.
Beradt's book shows how dreams are both the fruit of our personal unconscious and of the collective unconscious. She says that these dreams were conceived independently of their authors’ conscious will and were dictated to them by dictatorship. We can consider it a precursor of Social Dreaming, which departs from the premise that our dreams offer infinite insight into the world we live in. "The unconscious is a source of thinking for systems and for society, and that dreams are an unconscious form of thinking that may give access to what is not otherwise known or thought."
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