ABSTRACT
History of psychotherapy contributes to a growing body of knowledge about professional life in modern Germany, and about the social, political, and economic dynamics of the educated middle class. The history of psychotherapy in the Third Reich contributes to a rethinking of the issues of continuity and discontinuity in German history. This chapter shows that the opportunity for a challenge through reconciliation of old and new views of German history. These new views of German history rest upon a critique of "modernization" as a force for political and economic progress. The history of modem Germany is a particularly good example of the "illiberal," inegalitarian, and inhumane aspects of modem Western political and economic development. Parallel to the problem of teleology in German history lies the historical problem of continuity and discontinuity between the history of the Third Reich and the history of modern Germany.
