ABSTRACT
In his report to the fourth communications conference of the Art Directors’ Club of New York in 1958, Dr Felix Marti-Ibanez spoke on the subject ‘Symbology and Medicine’. In an extended comparison of corporeal disease with symbolic phenomena, Dr Ibanez described the swastika as a symbol that had been ‘stricken with a mortal infection’ by Nazism:
a paranoid schizophrenic Viennese house painter succeeded, using all the resources of modern propaganda, including mass hypnosis and — why should we not say so-collective symbolism, in dominating almost all Europe on his way to mastering the whole world. The swastika, which had been a symbol of well-being and enlightenment, then became a symbol of chaos, sadism, oppression and tyranny. Infection of its original meaning condemned this symbol to fall victim to a chronic infection, which will take centuries to heal.1
