The use of psychology within the context of intelligence or secret services around the world creates ethical issues that inherently erode psychology’s professional standards. The historic case of the East German “Stasi” secret police provides the opportunity to systematically study such clandestine abuses of psychology, as the Stasi archives are open and accessible. We present information on the structure and function of the Department of Operative Psychology at the former Academy of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi). This includes an outline of its history, corporate identity, curricula, research agenda, and academic (post-)graduation theses. The current article identifies and outlines practical secret police applications such as operational procedures, interrogation techniques, and proscription methods—some of which is subsumed in the Stasi term Zersetzung (decomposition of personalities). Finally, these findings will be discussed with regard to the professional ethics codes of psychologists. We outline recommendations for further scientific examination of this historic case sample and how to prevent this abuse of psychologists and psychological knowledge in the future.

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The scientific approach of “Völkerpsychologie” (roughly translated in English as “ethnic psychology”) as founded by Lazarus and Steinthal, and later by Wilhelm Wundt, was criticized early on by conservative protagonists in Germany, such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and others. This article looks into how their criticism influenced and changed Völkerpsychologie in its two facets: Völkerpsychologie as a theoretical approach and as an “applied approach.” Furthermore, the consequences of this double concept and the change to Völkerpsychologie regarding its role and the meaning for political objectives are discussed. In contrast to Wundt’s theoretical Völkerpsychologie, which is based on the thesis that peoples’ development originally started with similar behaviors, the so-called applied or “differentielle Völkerpsychologie” implied that people are different, that they are devaluated, selected, and eventually separated as races from one another. Changing psychology by adding a more biological dimension and approach led to differentielle Völkerpsychologie becoming an instrument for political goals. The concluding section of this article focuses on the question of to what extent this change of Völkerpsychologie might have prepared the foundation for totalitarian structures.

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