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AN AUSTRALIAN INTERNATIONALIST PARTS COMPANY WITH THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: H. DUNCAN HALL AND THE FREUDIAN RESPONSE TO GLOBAL IRRATIONALISM*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2014

JAMES COTTON
JAMES COTTON*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, ADFA, Canberra E-mail: j.cotton@adfa.edu.au
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Abstract

The most senior Australian in the League of Nations secretariat, H. Duncan Hall became an established advocate of institutional internationalism as a mitigator of conflict. From 1933, however, the advent of totalitarian movements and his exposure to Freudianism through his association with Dr Robert Waelder led him to the conviction that psychoanalysis provided the key to the irrationality of the times. He endeavoured to use his League position, including his influence in Australia, to convince opinion leaders of the profound dangers of national mass psychosis to the survival of the international order. Frustrated in the League, he then sought to convey the same message in the United States. Although largely unsuccessful in his efforts, and unable to establish an academic vehicle for the study of the issue in America, he was able to help bring to Australia the first practitioners of Freudian psychoanalysis trained in Europe.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , November 2016 , pp. 653 - 680
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This paper was written while 2013 Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia. The author is indebted to the Library and its helpful staff for providing an ideal research environment, and also to Duncan Kelly and this journal's anonymous readers for constructive comments.

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