Sigmund Freud at Berchtesgaden and Adolf Hitler

But, critically getting back to Freud’s massive lack of hard consciousness as to the observable historicity of Nazi Germany’s chief Nazi spending time at a Bavarian retreat with which Freud was, over the years, very familiar with, how does one possibly try to explain this cognitive-existential absurdity?   The set contention to be advanced is the notion of what may, perhaps, be called psycho-existential pseudo-aphasia syndrome (PEPAS), which tends to usually afflict and affect the minds of intellectuals, though, of course, not only those kinds of people; they are those people, the former cited, who become highly intellectualized such that normal cognitive processes cease to be mentally sufficient enough for certain areas or degrees of human consciousness.  Or, is it just a simple case of cultural amnesia?

Another quite notable historical example, among many that might be cited, was the expatriate American novelist-turned-British-citizen Henry James.  He, for instance, seriously wrote that he had to give up his United States citizenship and become a British subject because American society and culture genuinely lacked a true sense of tragedy.   It needs to be illustratively noted, however, that James was a teenager, in the USA, during what most historians have called the American Civil War, also more correctly known as the War for Southern Independence. 

In the rarified, refined, urbane, intellectualized thinking of James, that was not enough genuine tragedy to suit him, i.e., the minimum estimated deaths of at least 600,000 Americans, the wounding, crippling, etc. of over a million more, etc.  One wonders, at a minimum, just what would have satiated his lust for that which he might have then, perhaps, considered to be tragic enough from his curious point of view?  

Was he probably or possibly afflicted by PEPAS?   In giving another cognate example, the author of this article once worked with a professional librarian who had been in Uganda during the entire height of Idi Amin’s genocidal-oriented bloodbath; to this very day, however, she would deny totally that anything of that horrible nature had really occurred anywhere in Uganda because she then personally never had witnessed any such terrible things.   So, for her, they, the mass murders, etc., had just never happened.

Furthermore, it is known that no amount of detailed documentation, actual testimony from victims, survivors, participants, etc. will ever convince her otherwise.   She suffers, it is tentatively suggested, from PEPAS.   But, this situation of a lack of consciousness regarding the historicity of human reality does not pertain only to intellectuals. 

The author, also, once knew a Norwegian immigrant (a mere grade-school graduate at best) who honestly told him that he had been a teenager in a German concentration camp that had been in Norway; this man actually told the author, upon some questioning, that he never met any Nazis and that, as far as he was genuinely concerned, there were, in fact, no such people as Nazis.  

His mind, one guesses, had become deluded by an “overdose” of PEPAS, or, at least, one supposes.   But, the much more famous and important historical cases of Henry James and Freud were used so as to avoid any purely or solely anecdotal evidence for what is being said.   The latter person, as noted above, did not seem to have tremendously registered a very large impression, for some odd reason, in that mind of a presumably perceptive, analytical, and quite notable Jewish person (and an object of Nazi hate, of course).

After that Viennese personage was safely in England, it can be so noted that this Bavarian resort had witnessed the fact that, on September 15, 1938, Neville Chamberlin had met the Fuhrer there; it was their first meeting.   And, incidentally, Herr Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, for good measure, had later been there, on October 24th of that same year, to meet with Jozef Lipski, the Polish Ambassador.   On January 5, 1939, it could be also usefully recalled, Hitler had, as is known, later conferred with Józef Beck at that very same location. 

At any rate, in conclusion, this now ends this basically brief tour down memory lane for those who might still remember and, moreover, for those others who are, perhaps, historically interested; it is a great lesson to all regarding how important it is to consider the historicity of events, no matter who might be neglectful of being aware enough about the meaning(s) of those happenings, which just might be rather astounding