ABSTRACT

The appearance of Mein Kampf in unexpurgated translation has called forth far too many vandalistic comments. There are other ways of burning books than on the pyre—and the favorite method of the hasty reviewer is to deprive himself and his readers by inattention. The sexual symbolism that runs through Hitler’s book, lying in wait to draw upon the responses of contemporary sexual values, is easily characterized: Germany in dispersion is the “dehomed Siegfried.” The masses are “feminine.” As such, they desire to be led by a dominating male. The middle class contains, within the mind of each member, a duality: its members simultaneously have a cult of money and a detestation of this cult. When capitalism is going well, this conflict is left more or less in abeyance. Morton Prince’s psychiatric study of “Miss Beauchamp,” the case of a woman split into several sub-personalities at odds with one another, variously combining under hypnosis.