Gustave Gilbert
Gustave Mark Gilbert (September 30, 1911 – February 6, 1977) was an American psychologist best known for his writings containing observations of high-ranking Nazi leaders during the Nuremberg trials. His 1950 book The Psychology of Dictatorship was an attempt to profile the Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler using as reference the testimonials of Hitler's closest generals and commanders. Gilbert's published work is still a subject of study in many universities and colleges, especially in the field of psychology.
Gustave Gilbert
September 30, 1911
February 6, 1977 (aged 65)
Matilda Gilbert
Dynamic Psychophysics and the Phi Phenomenon[1] (1939)
- Nuremberg Diary (1947)
- The Psychology of Dictatorship (1950)
Early life and education[edit]
Gilbert was born in the state of New York in 1911, the son of Jewish-Austrian immigrants. He won a scholarship from the School for Ethical Culture at the College Town Center in New York. He attended the City College of New York where he majored in German before switching to psychology. In 1939, Gilbert obtained his PhD degree in psychology from Columbia University. Gilbert also held a diploma from the American Board of Examiners in professional psychology.
During World War II, Gilbert was commissioned with the rank of First Lieutenant.[2] Because of his knowledge of German, he was sent overseas as a translator.[2]
Later life[edit]
In 1948, as Head Psychologist at the Veterans Hospital at Lyons, NJ, Gilbert treated veterans of World Wars I and II who had suffered nervous breakdowns.
In 1950, Gilbert published The Psychology of Dictatorship: Based on an Examination of the Leaders of Nazi Germany. In this book, Gilbert made an attempt to portray a profile of the psychological behavior of Adolf Hitler, based on deductive work from eyewitness reports from Hitler's commanders in prison in Nuremberg.
In September 1954, while he was an Associate Professor of Psychology at Michigan State College, Gilbert attended the 62nd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in New York. Gilbert was part of a four-person panel discussing "Psychological Approaches to the Problem of Anti-Intellectualism."
In 1961, when he was the chairman of the psychology department of Long Island University in Brooklyn, Gilbert was summoned to testify in the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Gilbert testified on May 29, 1961, describing how both Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Rudolf Höss tried in their conversations with him to put the responsibility for the extermination of the Jews on each other's doorstep. Nevertheless, Eichmann appeared in the accounts of both men. Then he presented a document, handwritten by Höss, that surveys the process of extermination at Auschwitz and different sums of people gassed there – under Höss as commandant and according to an oral report by Eichmann. The court decided not to accept Gilbert's psychological analyses of the prisoners at Nuremberg as part of his testimony.[7]
In 1967, Gilbert convinced Leon Pomeroy, then a recent graduate from University of Texas at Austin, to build a clinical doctoral program in the field of psychology at Long Island University. At the time, Gilbert was serving as chairman of the psychology department of Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York.
Gilbert died on 6 February 1977.[8]
Gustave Gilbert has been portrayed by the following actors in film, television and theater productions;[9]
Also, the character "Abe Fields" in Michael Koehlmeier's 2008 book Abendland ("Occident") who is based on Gustave Gilbert (see the interview with the author [10] in the Austrian paper Der Falter of 15. 8. 2007). In the book, Abe Fields sits in on the trials as psychologist and speaks to the defendants.