Dear Colleague,

I'm in the process of organizing Richard Koenigsberg's online publications. There is a massive body of information contained in them. I'm trying to get control of everything.

I'm working now on Koenigsberg's papers. The first is "Awakening from the Nightmare of History: Psychological Interpretation of War and Genocide."

What I've done is to extract a few paragraphs from each paper--that contains a foundational idea. 

Please study the paragraph below--and click through the link above to read the entire paper.

Thank you for participating in this revolution in human thought.

Best regards,

Mary Helen (MHGS)

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The Psychopathology of War

"Beneath the sound, fury, and grandiosity of warfare lies a profound psychopathology, the willingness to kill, die and maim in the name of nations. Historical accounts deny psychopathology by depicting war as if a normal, even natural human activity.

"The case study of the First World War that I've presented illuminates the pathological quality of warfare. Nations of the world continued to send men to die, day after day, month after month, year after year, producing a quantity of casualties so mind-boggling that even now people are attempting to comprehend and come to terms with what occurred.

"Perpetuation of the institution of warfare requires a denial of what happens to the body of the soldier. Delusions of honor and glory are sustained only by turning away from the results of battle. Haig’s son reported that the British Commander-in-Chief felt that it was his duty to “refrain from visiting the casualty stations because these visits made him physically ill (in Gilbert, 1994, 221)." 

The French Commander Joffre—after pinning a military decoration on a blinded soldier—said to his Staff: “I mustn’t be shown any more such spectacles. I would no longer have the courage to give the order to attack (221)."

"War is about the mutilation of the body of the soldier in the name of a sacred ideal. We want the “beautiful” ideals, but don’t want to look at the body of the soldier.