As some readers will know, John Beebe is a medical doctor and self-identified ENTP who has written a lot on typology. Beebe also played a crucial part in developing the theory of cognitive functions from a four-function model to an eight-function model (a notion which we cannot agree with at CelebrityTypes). Beebe has offered a type assessment of Hitler in print. According to Beebe, Hitler is an IS-J:
“Hitler was originally probably an introverted sensation type, whose inferior extraverted intuition, carried by a hypomanic but inspiring anima, had led Germany in the 1930s to a miraculous economic recovery. On the verge of his starting World War II, however, encouraged by the fascination and lack of limit-setting of other world powers, Hitler’s inflated, but unstable, extraverted intuition seemed to give over to its truly demonic shadow, an undermining introverted intuition that assumed the form of a distorted religious vision. Hitler’s use of a falsified, ‘bedeviled’ version of the old Germanic god Wotan to stir up archetypal support for his vengeful project of world domination and ethnic purification was like introducing a virus into the collective unconscious of the German people: he did succeed in producing a genuine religious disturbance, a caesura in the spiritual history of Europe, from which the West is still trying to recover. Hitler’s case, as no other, illustrates the dangerousness of the demonic function, that area of primitive compensations and uncanny possessions that is in all of us, but is an especial threat, through the collapse of the inferior function, to decompensating individuals.” – John Beebe, Jungian Analysis, 1995 ed. pp. 329-330
On one site, this passage is referred to as an “excellent case” for Hitler as IS-J. But at CelebrityTypes, we don’t think this is an excellent case at all. The text barely argues its claims; it merely states them. If that is the way it is supposed to be done, we could merely state the opposite, namely that Hitler was INFJ (or any other type), and we would then have done just as much as the text quoted above to “prove” our case as Beebe has done above. Adding a ton of psychological verbiage (e.g. “a hypomanic but inspiring anima”) does not change the fundamental structure of the text: It is merely postulation and not argument.
Moreover, the passage doesn’t connect its own dots. We are told that Hitler had this “hypomanic but inspiring anima”. This is a plausible, if heavily Jungian, interpretation of Hitler’s lack of emotional stability, but we are never told why this instability must stem from the inferior function, or even why this must mean that Hitler’s inferior function was Ne. (Beebe does refer to von Franz’s essay The Inferior Function in which she speculates that every German that was seduced by the Nazi movement was seduced via the inferior function. But that doesn’t begin to cover all of Beebe’s claims and, oddly enough, von Franz writes that Hitler’s inferior function isn’t intuition, so Beebe’s reference to von Franz doesn’t really help his case.)
Then Beebe claims that it was Hitler’s inferior Ne that “led Germany in the 1930s to a miraculous economic recovery”. But was this recovery really so miraculous? That can be debated. Over the course of the 1930s, the German balance of payments went strongly negative and Germany amassed a huge foreign debt. Indeed, Hitler’s economic advisers feared that the economy might collapse under the weight of the massive debt. Even if the economic development of the 1930s was miraculous, was it even Hitler’s doing? One reason the German economy did not collapse was because of the financial genius of Hjalmar Schacht, President of the Reichsbank. Schacht initiated several export/import schemes and currency manipulations, many of which were illegal, and so the economic “recovery” of the 1930s – miraculous or not – should perhaps more properly be attributed to Hjalmar Schacht than to Hitler.
Even Hitler would agree that the economic surge of the 30s was largely Schacht’s doing:
“[It was Schacht’s] consummate skill in swindling other people which made him indispensable at the time. … the tricks Schacht succeeded in playing on [the bankers of the world] … It is Schact who was the instigator of the plan, subsequently put into practice, of devaluing German shares held abroad. … These shares were then later purchased in the open market … at prices varying from 12 percent to 18 percent of their real value. … In this way, thanks to a profit of 80 percent and over, we were able to organize an export dumping campaign which brought in three-quarters of a billion marks in foreign currency.” – Adolf Hitler, quoted in Trevor-Roper: Hitler’s Table Talk, Enigma Books, 2000 ed. pp. 432-433
A Shift in Hitler’s Mindset?
Beebe then writes:
“On the verge of his starting World War II, however, encouraged by the fascination and lack of limit-setting of other world powers, Hitler’s inflated, but unstable, extraverted intuition seemed to give over to its truly demonic shadow, an undermining introverted intuition that assumed the form of a distorted religious vision.”
Yet again, we find several questionable claims here. That Hitler was encouraged to go to war in the West by the indecisiveness of England and France is probably true. But by Beebe’s account, Hitler’s “religious vision” is supposed to have originated “on the verge” of the war. This is not in accordance with the historical records which indicate that Hitler’s religiously-charged vision of German ascendancy was fully-formed around the time of World War 1.
As he was recuperating from his war injuries in 1919, Hitler experienced what he perceived to be a divine vision. This vision told him that it was his mission to save Germany. Several of Hitler’s acquaintances from the inter-war years have reported how he always spoke of this vision as the turning point of his life, and in a speech to the commanding generals of the Wehrmacht on 23 November 1939, Hitler professed that he made the resolution to acquire political power “in 1919 when, after long internal struggles, I became a politician and took up the battle against my enemy.”
To anyone who had actually read Hitler’s works, the intention to go to war was always clear:
“Germany must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation. The National Socialist Movement must strive to eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area – viewing this latter as a source of food as well as a basis for power politics – between our historical past and the hopelessness of our present impotence.” – Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Volume II, Section 14
So Beebe’s claim that Hitler’s political aspirations only turned into a religious vision towards the end of the 1930s is demonstrably false, as is the implication that the war was somehow different from the economic buildup that preceded it. There was no sudden change in Hitler’s mindset during the 1930s. The economic buildup that preceded the outbreak of the war had featured heavy elements of military spending for a reason. The war and the buildup that preceded it constituted the same policy.
Conclusion
In this article we have mostly concentrated on the factual and historical claims that Beebe makes in his assessment of Hitler. This may seem like nitpicking at times, and to be perfectly honest, we think so too. We would much rather engage with Beebe’s arguments as to why Hitler is supposedly an IS-J type. But Beebe doesn’t argue or illustrate why he thinks Hitler is an IS-J so as much as he simply postulates that he is one.
Moreover, as Beebe’s reading is a heavily inductive and unfalsifiable one, there is no way for the reader who finds himself in disagreement to actually engage with Beebe’s assessment. And if we are just going to take Beebe at his word, we would do well to assure ourselves that Beebe’s assessment rests upon thorough research and a deep familiarity with the events that he is describing.
Based upon the claims examined above, this does not seem to be the case. As such, we cannot accept Beebe’s assessment that Hitler was an IS-J type.