Psychologists’ Involvement in Repressive “Stasi” Secret Police Activities in Former East Germany

Abstract

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.

Psychologie unter politischem Diktat in der DDR

“…Vor diesem Hintergrund erscheint es besonders geboten, die im Zusammenhang mit der ersten Förderphase erzielten Ergebnisse in ihrem Gesamtzusammenhang darzustellen und bisherige Publikationen zur Thematik und aus dem BMBF-Teilprojekt zu ergänzen (Maercker & Guski-Leinwand, 2018;Nussmann & Guski-Leinwand, 2023aNussmann, 2023;. Zu der Darstellung der Ergebnisse werden in der vorliegenden Publikation so weit wie möglich zeitgenössisch erschienene Arbeiten des 20.…”

“…B. Richter, 2001;Maercker & Guski-Leinwand, 2018;Gieseke, 2021;Dörre, 2021;Koch, 2021;Wieser, 2021) und auch hinsichtlich ihres wissenschaftlichen Gehaltes kritisch während des Förderzeitraumes im interdisziplinären Austausch (erneut) untersucht worden (Richter, 2021;Schmiedebach, 2021;Busse, 2022;Maer cker et al, 2022). Ergänzend zu den bereits vorliegenden Untersuchungen wird sie in der hiesigen Untersuchung bezüglich ihres gefährdenden Gehaltes für die psychische Gesundheit unter einem gesundheitspsychologischen Fazit abschließend betrachtet.…”

“…Als besonders kritischer Aspekt ist hierbei die Verwertung psychologischen Fachwissens durch das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit zu nennen, wie weiter unten in Teil IV noch ausführlicher dargestellt wird (vgl. Maercker & Guski-Leinwand, 2018).…”

Psychology and the fall of Communism: The special case of (East) Germany

“…This was an act of revenge, but also a political intervention, intended to expose mechanisms of repression utilizing what the Stasi operatives themselves called "the human factor." Fuchs' widely noticed publications initiated intensive research and debate on this topic that continues to this day (Maercker & Gieseke, 2021;Maercker & Guski-Leinwand, 2018;Maercker et al, 2022;Michels & Wieser, 2018; for psychoanalytic reflections on this topic see A. Simon, 2006).…”

“…His move to autobiography could perhaps be interpreted as a compensatory tactic, a way to help himself work through this frustration. Stasi‐psychology: scholarship as political intervention.In 1990 Jürgen Fuchs, a psychologist trained in Jena and a political dissident who was expelled to the West after a prison sentence, republished protocols of his interrogation by Stasi operatives originally published in 1976 and 1977 (Fuchs, 1976, 1977, 1990). This was an act of revenge, but also a political intervention, intended to expose mechanisms of repression utilizing what the Stasi operatives themselves called “the human factor.” Fuchs' widely noticed publications initiated intensive research and debate on this topic that continues to this day (Maercker & Gieseke, 2021; Maercker & Guski‐Leinwand, 2018; Maercker et al, 2022; Michels & Wieser, 2018; for psychoanalytic reflections on this topic see A. Simon, 2006). Here, I mention only a conference held in the former Stasi headquarters in East Berlin to reflect on the scientific content behind the Stasi's “Operative Psychology.” The proceedings were published in 1995 under the title, “Undermining the Soul” ( Zersetzung der Seele ) (Behnke & Fuchs, 1995).…”