How a Nazi saved Sigmund Freud

At the end of October 1945, at Harry Freud's insistence, Sauerwald was arrested and the police started to investigate every aspect of his past. As soon as he was appointed Truehandler to the Freud family, on March 15 1938, Sauerwald controlled not only their assets but in effect their destiny. Freud wrote to his friend Arnold Zweig: "The people in their worship of antisemitism are entirely at one with their brothers in the Reich." A man held a pistol to Freud's son's head. 'Why not shoot him,' he shouted Freud had to cope with the Anschluss in terrible physical pain.

Sauerwald examined the records of the Freud family and of the Verlag; he read the letters people had sent to all members of the family. There is a note appended to the court proceedings after the war that Sauerwald had estimated Freud's worth at between 2 and 3 million schillings, a considerable fortune. After having read Freud's books, Sauerwald did not disclose to his superiors that Freud had many secret bank accounts abroad. Instead, he took the evidence back to his own apartment, where he had a locked box for important documents. Persuading Freud Ironically, Freud only agreed to try to leave Vienna after Anna, his beloved daughter, had been arrested by the Gestapo.

As he wondered whether or not to sign the papers for Freud's exit visa, Sauerwald got a new order from Berlin. Sauerwald finally signed the papers saying that there was no impediment to Freud leaving. Max Schur said that no one could understand why Sauerwald had saved the Freuds and thought that reading Freud's books had changed Sauerwald's attitude. Freud's brother, Alexander, met Sauerwald and asked him directly what his motives had been. And Sauerwald said “The Führer of course knows best and realises that the Fatherland is in a state of siege. The Jews, due to their internationalist leanings and their tendency towards individualistic behaviour, cannot form a reliable element of the population. Thus they have to be eliminated. This does not mean, however, that an individual should not be permitted to alleviate individual hardship in selected cases.”

As for Sauerwald, he was finally released after Anna Freud wrote to say that he had indeed helped the family but by then he had spent 18 months in detention.

Abu Ghraib

After the US and Iraq forces took over the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, American soldiers were set to run the prison. The soldiers abused prisoners, both sexually and mentally. They made inmates do painful postures, they performed religious humiliation and prolonged sleep deprivation. These techniques were used to soften up valuable inmates for interrogation.

The question is, why did the soldiers do this, seemingly normal people abused and harassed other human beings, why? It is believed that the reason might be because of what is known as conformity. Conformity can be explained as “the act of matching attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to group norms”. But what is of more relevance is the Deviations of Conformity. It can be divided into Informational influence, normative influence and Referent Informational influence.

 Informational influence is when we modify our attitudes to fit others that we think or believe have information we are lacking, believing they are correct. In the Abu Ghraib prison, soldiers might have conformed after one of the soldiers decided to do something, and the others believed that this one soldier had information they were lacking.

Normative influence is when we have the urge to be liked, and we alter our behavior to what they expect, even though it might not be right. In the Abu Ghraib prison, the fact that they were soldiers can have affected them by being biased towards what soldiers should be. Rough, tough and violent, so to make others like them and not be an outsider they conformed to be what was thought the other soldiers expected them to be

Referent informational influence is that we conform in response to our group, as we have a sense of belongingness to maintain our desired social identities. In the Abu Ghraib prison the soldiers wanted to stay together as a group, so they didn’t protest on the torture of inmates as that might make them an outsider that is not part of the “in-group”, even though what they did was wrong and unethical they still conformed and stayed in the “in-group”.

Even though the actions of the soldiers can be explained as conformity, it didn’t give them right or make it ok to abuse the inmates in Abu Ghraib prison.

Stanford Prison Experiment Ethical Issues

The Stanford Prison Experiment Ethical Issues

The Stanford prison experiment was performed in 1971, and since there has been talked a lot about the many ethical during the experiment.

During the Stanford Prison experiment both prisoners and guards were put under severe stress. Participants were also psychologically harmed during the experiment the participants were deceived, as the documents the participants were given did not state fully what were going to happen to them, for example; it was not listed anywhere that participants had signed up to get arrested in a realistic simulation and later on blindfolded and stripped naked.

The prisoners were beaten, they were verbally abused and psychologically broken down. When one of the prisoners had a emotional breakdown and showed signs of depression it took a while for the prisoner to be released, when he should’ve been released immediately as he started showing signs of depression.

 Later on, prisoner 416 expressed his concerns over the treatment of the other prisoners. The guards responded with more abuse. Prisoner 416 went on a hunger strike, and should’ve been released at this point, but the only thing that happened was that he was put in a dark closet, as other prisoners were encouraged to bang on the door and repeatedly shouting at prisoner 416. Prisoner 416 should have been released as soon as he went on a hunger strike. But instead he was punished even more.

If this study were to be conducted today, Zimbardo would not be able to publish his study due to breaking ethical rules/guide-lines set by the APA. The harm on participants was not minimized and the good of the study did not outweigh the harm. During this experiment long term consequences could occur and autonomy implying respect for the individuals were not present during the experiment. There was no respect for the participant’s rights. They were not given an opportunity to accept all the risks in the experiments. This is some of the ethical issues The Stanford Prison Experiment by Zimbardo, had.

BoBo doll experiment (1961)

BoBo doll experiment (1961)Aim: To demonstrate that if children were witnesses to aggressive display by an adult they would imitate this aggressive behavior when given the opportunity.Participants: 36 boys and 36 girls all aged between 42 and 71 months.Procedure: 24 children (12 boys and 12 girls) watched a male or female model behave aggressively towards a 'Bobo doll'. The adults attacked the Bobo doll in a distinctive manner, using a hammer in some cases, and in others threw the doll in the air and shouted "Pow, Boom". Another 24 children (12 boys and 12 girls) watched a non-aggressive model that played in a quiet and calm manner for 10 minutes. The 24 children (12 boys and 12 girls) left were used as a control group and not exposed to any model at all.Results: Children that were exposed to the violet model tended to imitate the exact behavior they had observed when the adult was no longer present. The results indicated that while children of both genders in the non-aggressive group did exhibit less aggression than the control group, boys who had observed an opposite-sex model behavior non-aggressively were more likely than those in the control group to engage in violence. Boys that observed an adult male behaving violently were more influenced than those who had observed a female model behavior aggressively. Interestingly, the experimenters found in the same-sex aggressive groups, boys were more likely to imitate physical acts of violence while girls were more likely to imitate verbal aggression. Boys engaged in more than twice as many acts of aggression than the girls.Conclusion: children observing adult behavior is influenced to think that this type of behavior is acceptable thus weakening the child's aggressive inhibitions. The result of reduced aggressive inhibitions in children means that they are more likely to respond to future situations in a more aggressive manner.