Adolf Hitler: The Man or the Monster
PSY 300

Adolf Hitler: The Man and his Demons
Introduction
“One blood demands one Reich!” (Hitler, 1999). Adolf Hitler was not the man that everyone believes him to be. This paper will explain how Sigmund Freud’s theory and Carl Rogers Humanistic theory relate to Adolf Hitler and will shed light on how the two theories may have shaped him into the infamous man in history today. This paper will also hold the element of surprise and enlightenment due to information that is not regularly discussed whenever an individual hears the name Adolf Hitler. Discussion
Background Information Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th, 1899 to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzi. He was the second youngest child out of his five siblings. Both Alois and Klara had known poverty but had strived for a better way to live. The Hitler’s led a fairly comfortable middle- class life but family dynamics left much to be desired. As a father Alois was stern, distant, and irritable and as a husband he expected full obedience from his wife. (cite hitler book) He enjoyed spending outside over spending time with his family, leaving them to their own devices. Luckily for the children Klara did her best to combat how their father treated them and showered them with affection. Klara developed a strong bond with Adolf that was returned with fervor. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote “I had honored my father but loved my mother.” (Hitler, 1999). Hitler was the type of child that would challenge his father on almost a daily basis and would receive severe beatings for it. He experienced death when his little brother passed away from the measles and the passing affected Hitler deeply. His father passed away in 1903 and his mother passed only four years later. At the tender age of 18, he was placed in a boarding house for men. He also experienced loss at an older age when he was denied entry twice to the entrance exam of the Academy of Fine Arts and was also denied entry into the army after being declared physically unfit. Although he did end up becoming a messenger runner in the Bavarian Army in World War 1 and later on a propaganda speaker (Wilson, 2012). While Hitler’s young life was unconventional; he still managed to be a boy that loved art and playing war games. Which leads to the question, how did he become the man that can be considered one of the most hated?
Nature VS. Nurture
Adolf Hitler, in my belief, was shaped by the continuous rejection and abuse in his life. His father rejected not only him but his entire family, the mother that Hitler cherished. He was rejected in what he wanted the most, an education at the best art school around. To add insult to injury, he was then later on rejected to join the army because he would not make a satisfactory solider. Hitler was exposed to both moral and emotional ways of psychological development through his experiences. All of the rejection and abuse shaped him into a person who wanted to be on the other side of the experiences he had gone through. Hitler also had experience with propaganda and was good at leading people to believe what he wanted them to. His previous experience with propaganda made it easier for him to win over the mass of people that followed his belief system. If the information I had learned was from an unknown source then I most likely would not have thought the individual would turn to mass genocide. Personality theories may be able to explain this conundrum.
Sigmund Freud – Psychodynamic Sigmund Freud believed that psychological forces such as uncertainties, desires, and intentions have both a direction and intensity. When motives collide and diverge, the balance of these forces determines the individual’s behavior. In particular, Freud’s compromise formations seem to fit how Adolf Hitler was documented to be. A compromise formation is when an individual is faced with seeing his or herself with accuracy and maintaining his or her own self-esteem, they tend to compromise (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Hitler was rejected, failed an important (to his dreams) exam twice, and rejected from the army. He was not accurate as a child or an adult so to maintain his self-esteem he compromised. Although the compromise was that he was right regardless of what others had to say and his failures were to blame on everyone else. This was the way that he maintained his own self-esteem and essentially protected himself from feeling like a failure. The humanistic theory also lends to this theory and supports how Hitler justified his behaviors.
Carl Rogers – Humanistic Carl Rogers was a humanistic psychologist that believed for a person to grow a specific environment had to be provided. Genuineness, acceptance, and empathy were necessities to this environment. Rogers theories core was the humans have one basic motive and that is the tendency to fulfill his or her potential and achieve the highest level of his or her self possible. Rogers also believed that for an individual to thrive his or her ideal self has to be congruent with his or her actual behavior (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). Hitler did have the motivation to fulfill who and what he wanted to be and to reach the highest level of himself but he was not able to. To put it bluntly, he was not good enough to become the person he wanted to be. In particular Hitler could not grow in a positive manner because his ideal self and actual behavior was not congruent together. He was incongruent and that led him to use defense mechanisms and to personally accept the person that he ultimately became. His ideal self was what he wanted it to be even though it was distorted from the reality of who he was.
Comparison of Theories The two theories are very similar because they both allow an individual to rationalize the person that they are, regardless if it is right or wrong. Freud’s theory was based more on self-esteem whereas Rogers theory was about how an individual viewed him or herself (Kowalski & Westen, 2011). In my personal opinion I think that Carl Rogers theory fits Hitler’s experiences the most. Hitler had a distorted sense of who he was as a person. Even though he failed and faced rejected, he did not give up. He continued to fantasize that his dreams would become real one day but that day never came. Instead he ended up becoming the infamous individual everyone hears about today. His own self image was a distorted image of his real self and he held no issue with it. I am not even certain that he knew who he really was. Hitler had built up many defense mechanisms that made him view himself as the perfect person he thought himself to be. He blamed everyone for his failures but himself, even in his own autobiography written in prison, he continued to blame others for his failures. His distorted view allowed him to live a life feeling as if he had done everything he could but failed due to others lack of competence. Conclusion In this paper I have delved deep into the world of Adolf Hitler and the events that shaped him as an individual. Any way that Hitler is examined tends to lead to more questions than answers because of the complexity of the individual that he was. The two theories, psychodynamic and humanistic, that I discussed in this paper supports my beliefs on any explanation of why he turned into a hateful being that always had murder on his mind.

References
Hitler, A. (1999). Mein Kampf. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Kowalski, R., & Westen, D. (2011). Pyschology (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Wilson, A. N. (2012). Hitler. New York, NY: Basic Books.