Freud described dreams as the royal road to the unconscious. He was talking about individuals, but suppose they were the royal road to a nation’s unconscious. Charlotte Beradt collected dreams from Nazi Germany from 1933-9. In it were dreams about Hitler, Goering, Himmler, the Reich revealing a much more complex attitude to the regime than their conscious mind knew, a glimpse of how deeply the Third Reich had penetrated their minds. For example a Jewish doctor dreamt he had saved Hitler’s life and was pleased to be acknowledged. The book was originally published in 1968, then republished in 1985 and is due to be re-republished April 2025. We think, it is very timely as once more the world leans towards the right and through dreams we might see how our unconscious attitudes to power and authority, our wish to belong and be accepted might in some way be part of the zeitgeist. The people who did not have dreams in which an ambivalent attitude was reflected were those who actively opposed the regime. There might be lessons for us today.“This is the kind of book that haunts your dreams. Essential reading for anyone who has known what it is like to live within a totalitarian state—or is worried they’re about to find out.”—Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books “A strange, enthralling book. . . . The Third Reich of Dreams is a collective diary, a witness account hauled out of a nation’s shadows and into forensic light.” —Mireille Juchau, New Yorker
Course Content
Presenter
Amanda Rubin is a documentary film-maker. Whilst developing a film project about Charlotte Beradt and her unique dream-collection, she was introduced to Robin Shohet, thus locating the ‘lost’ English Language Rights to the book. She has been closely involved in this timely re-publication with Princeton University Press.
Robin Shohet has been supervising for nearly fifty years beginning when he met Peter in 1976 and they staffed a therapeutic community for people coming out of psychiatric hospital. They combined to write Supervision in the Helping Professionsin 1989 which is now in its fifth edition. He co-wrote In Love with Supervision with Joan Shohet and his next book, Supervision as Spiritual Practice, an edited one, is due out in December 2024. He has organised two international conferences on forgiveness and is aiming to do another for 2026. He is a long time student of A Course in Miracles.
