How Dehumanization Leads to Murder and Genocide

Stewart Gabel, MD, PhD, is currently working in an unaffiliated private practice of psychiatry. He is former Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Children’s Hospital, Denver, and Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine (1992–2002); Medical Director, Division of Children and Family Services, Office of Mental Health, New York State (2007–2012).

“This informative and accessible contribution to the burgeoning literature on dehumanization is the first and only book in the English language focusing specifically on the dehumanization of Jews during the Nazi regime. Highly recommended! “—  David Livingstone Smith, author of Making Monsters: Dehumanization and How to Resist It“This volume explores ways in which intolerance and enmity perniciously result in the dehumanization of individuals and groups, setting the stage for nothing less than the mass murder of entire groups and cultures. The author effectively shows ways in which othering and objectification wears away at any empathy and identification, an alienation that allows for nothing less than Genocide, a neologism invented only after the Shoah. The insidious nature of this turn is explored by the author using historical texts and individual stories. A compelling and necessary read for historians, mental health professionals, and students of history, sociology, psychohistory, and Jewish studies.”— Emily Kuriloff, Psy.D., Clinical Psychologist, Psychoanalyst, and author of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich: History, Memory, Tradition. Routledge, 2014“Dr. Gabel, a child psychiatrist and historian, takes on the inexplicable. He probes what makes for and sustains history’s horrific genocides. ‘Behavior serves a purpose’ helps in understanding motivations, including murder. But Dr. Gabel goes further with his core insight: that ‘dehumanization’ opens intrinsic psychological doors to allow for the progression from violence to murder to genocide. This is a deeply considered and scholarly book about what we have not been able to face.”— Lloyd I. Sederer, MD, Adjunct Professor, Columbia School of Public Health

• IntroductionA Brief History of the Jews from Antiquity through the Middle AgesAntisemitism and Dehumanization of the Jews in the Modern Period. Enlightenment and Emancipation. Political AntisemitismDehumanization. Research. Definitions. Examples in the Nazi EraThe Human Propensity toward Violence, Destruction, and Murder. Prohibitions against Killing Other Humans. Examples of the Tendency toward Violence and Murder in the Nazi EraThe Progression from Dehumanization to Murder and Genocide in the Nazi EraDehumanization of School-Aged Children in Nazi GermanyMedical Implementation of Aryan Ideology: Sterilization, Euthanasia, ExperimentationSummary and Conclusions. Alternative Approaches. Addressing DehumanizationReferencesIndex