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During World War II in 1941, the psychologist P. R. Hofstätter added an article to the debate on the crisis of psychology in a distinctly Nazi academic journal. After introducing Hofstätter and the journal, the core elements of his diagnosis and therapy recommendation beneath the National-Socialist-verbiage will be expounded. Hofstätter, a student of Karl Bühler's, ties on to his teacher's crisis well-known publication, but perceives the crisis in a broader perspective and connects it to the decline of theology and of pastoral guidance. Hofstätter's central, new aspect is the practice of psychology without which he sees it doomed. A central feature of psychological practice should be secular, non-therapeutic guidance of individuals. Various contextual facets are illuminated, Hofstätter's thwarted attempts to get a university position, the recent establishment of psychology in Germany as a discipline teaching professionals, the abolition of German military psychology, the battle for the Berlin university chair of Wolfgang Köhler.

DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.11.009

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