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Abstract
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Hitler's father, Alois, was born the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. In his fortieth year, he changed his name to Hitler, the maiden name of his mother-in-law. Adolf was Alois' fifth child, the third of his own mother (Alois' third wife) but the first to live more than two years. Hitler's personality structure, though falling within the normal range, may now be described as of the paranoid type with delusions of persecution and of grandeur. This stems from a sado-masochistic split in his personality. Integral with these alternating and opposed elements in his personality are his fear of infection, the identification of the Jews as the source of that infection, and some derangement of the sexual function which makes his relations to the opposite sex abnormal in nature. The drama and tragedy of Hitler's life are the projection onto the world of his own inner conflicts and his attempts to solve them. The split in Hitler's personality seems clearly to be due to his identification both with his mother, whom he passionately loved, and with his father, whom he hated and feared. His dominant, aggressive, brutal activities arouse the violent protest of the other side of his nature; nightmares and sleepless nights result. But fear is assuaged by the fiction of the demands of Fate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)
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