ABSTRACT
Even though the Reich Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy in the Reich Research Council was reduced to rubble in the final days of the Third Reich, its history goes far beyond 1945. There were thus two equally fundamental dynamics to the history of psychotherapy in the German lands in the first three decades after 1945. The first was the reconstruction of a professional capacity developed chiefly between the ends of the two world wars. The second, coincident with the first, was widespread repression among psychotherapists in both East and West Germany of the true nature of the history of their discipline in the Third Reich. The suffering and chaos of the immediate postwar period, the chilling fears of the cold war, and the exertion and exhilaration of professional reconstruction and advancement, psychotherapists in both postwar German successor states had little time and even less desire for hard reflection on the crucial history of their discipline in the Third Reich.
