Jeffrey Guterman  

Jeffrey T. Guterman, Ph.D. discusses Albert Ellis's Hitler remark at the American Counseling Association's 1996 World Conference. The remark was made during the workshop, "Ethical Issues in the Postmodern Era" held on April 22, 1996. Guterman reads an excerpt from the Preface of his book, Mastering the Art of Solution-Focused Counseling which chronicles the workshop. He then plays an audio excerpt from the workshop of Ellis's Hitler remark. Ellis's remark was in response to the following Yakima Nation proverb that was previously cited by Allen E. Ivey at the workshop:

Progression from childhood to maturity
is the work of the young.
But it requires the guidance and support
of the family and society.
Education of each boy and girl is the
gradual revelation of a culture.
When thoughts and actions become
one with culture,
maturity is the result and respect is
the reward.

This is the transcript of Ellis's Hitler remark:

The only thing I was puzzled about was Allen had a, up on the screen there, "When thoughts and actions become one with culture, maturity is the result and respect is the reward." Now the problem is, as Jeff said originally, it's our interpretations of these things. And one interpretation occurred to me immediately. Well, that's great. But then the other one is Hitlerism! Hitler was a culture and consequently... [interrupted by applause]. And you have to watch it! And I listened to all the speakers, including even Jeff, and my general conclusion is we all are much closer together then would seem on the surface and the reason it doesn't see that we are is that what might be called individualism rears its ugly head. Now, I'm an individualist, and I don't want to throw out individualism. I want to take on social responsibility without throwing out individualism which, among other things, I think is one of the biosocial aspects of humans. But as soon as you become individualistic, you tend to lose sight of the relativistic and the postmodern and the scientific aspects of things because science is not really individualistic, it's collective. It puts up an individual hypothesis usually by individuals, some brilliant individuals, but then it collectively explores it and it requires some kind of evidence in an ultimate sense, not to prove the point, but at least to disprove it as Karl Popper has said. But postmodernism is also very anti-individualistic, but very flexible, and therefore it overlaps with science. They're both collective in many respects. They both are flexible. And then underneath the surface, they both have individualistic elements because I don't think you can get rid of that, but they sort of tame it down and allow us individuals to live happily together in some kind of relationship and collective society.