prejudice.
At the same time, Hitler apparently was quite charismatic, appealing to large numbers of the German population as a leader who they expected to restore the honor and achievement of the German nation. While this is increasingly difficult to understand as time passes, it is clear that this is an accurate assessment of the situation. Indeed, Hitler also either had the capacity to organize a nation on a large scale, or to surround himself with people who had the capacity to accomplish this. Yet in light of the atrocities committed by his command, the question of what to make of such a personality remains.
There are a number of viewpoints that could be adopted in order to think about Hitler's personality in psychological terms. For Freud, Hitler's story might be essentially an example of a failed resolution to the Oedipal crisis. For Alice Miller, who discussed Hitler extensively in her work, Hitler's story is one revelatory of the potentially extreme impact of childhood abuse and the narcissism resulting from it.
One approach to understanding Hitler's personality is the psychoanalytic approach. This developed from Freud through Erikson to the object relations theorists of the current time. Alice Miller was also a psychoanalyst, although her work has diverged from the traditional interpretations.
For Freud, the earliest stages of the child's development were the oral, anal, and phallic stages, which represented the first 6 years of the child's life. It was during this stage that the child was overwhelming self focused, or narcissistic. The entire orientation of the self was towrd self gratification.
Correspondingly, in Erikson's terminology, this represents the period during which children learn trust, autonomy, and initiative; or they learn mistrust, shame, and guilt. Alice Miller built upon this understanding, in some respects, when she looked at the way early ch
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