The Nazi and the Psychiatrist Read Online Free PDF Page A

his wife’s care, Göring relapsed into addiction and was soon back again at Langbro for another round of withdrawal. He repeated the treatment in Germany in 1927, and he told Kelley that he took a final dose of morphine during the winter of 1928–1929 to treat a sore throat. Göring’s drug use then ended for several years, even through Carin’s death in 1930 and the Nazis’ subsequent ascent to power in Germany.
    Despite his occasional and controlled use of diet and sleeping pills, Göring seemed to have kicked the drug habit. A change occurred in 1937, however, when a toothache pushed him back to dependency. His dentist believed that nervousness and anxiety were causing the pain, and he gave Göring a bottle of paracodeine with instructions to take two tablets every two hours until the pain diminished. Five days later, when the pain and pills were gone, Göring, anxious to fight off his rising craving for morphine,demanded more. The dentist warned him about the potential for dependency and refused to comply, but Göring had no trouble finding a supply. He was soon taking ten tablets a day.
    Göring should have listened to the dentist’s warnings about physical and psychological dependence. Although paracodeine did not give him a sense of euphoria, he relied on it to heighten his optimism, alertness, and charm. It also swung his mood between elation and depression and seemed to exaggerate his tendencies toward egocentricity, bombast, and flamboyance in dress and appearance. He stored the tablets in his house in antique Venetian glass bowls, giving him convenient access to the narcotic whenever he felt the craving.
    The Reichsmarschall told Kelley that he had taken paracodeine at a relatively low dose until 1940, when wartime stresses multiplied and he began consuming up to 160 pills a day. He reduced that alarming rate of consumption later in the war, but it edged up again as Germany’s defeat loomed.“When he was captured, he states he was taking about 100 tablets per day,” Kelley wrote in his examination notes—about three times the recommended maximum daily dose. This amount, Kelley observed, was“not an unusually large dose. It was not enough to have affected his mental processes at any time.”
    Kelley appealed to Göring’s pride in his physical strength and prowess to speed up the withdrawal. He realized how easy it was to suggest to the prisoner that he was a mightier man than others and could quit quickly. Göring responded to Kelley’s flattery with enthusiasm, concealing his leg pains and other withdrawal symptoms he felt unless specifically asked about them. Kelley gently reduced Göring’s intake of paracodeine, and by August 12 the prisoner was free from the drug.
    The physician was learning how to manipulate Göring psychologically. But he did not see how the Nazi was influencing his own thinking. By with-holding information about his withdrawal discomfort, Göring had managed to convince Kelley that his paracodeine addiction was slight, hardly an addiction at all. Kelley decided that it was more of a “habit.”“It was the need to do something with his hands and mouth, to perform an act he wasaccustomed to, and liked, doing,” he wrote. “Just as smokers are careful to have a supply of cigarettes and tobacco on their desks each morning, so Göring would place on his desk a bottle containing a hundred of his little pills. Then, during conferences or discussions, he would reach out, open the bottle, shake out a few tablets into his hand and, popping them into his mouth, chew them leisurely while carrying on his conversation.” Kelley added: “I can testify that his addiction was not very severe.”
    Others at Mondorf heard differently from Göring. He told Commandant Andrus during his withdrawal that his head hurt and he couldn’t sleep. He wanted his old dosage of paracodeine restored. The unsympathetic Andrus noted that“he had whined and complained like a spoiled child throughout the