''Friendship and Fratricide, an Analysis of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss'' is a 1967 book by psychoanalyst Meyer A. Zeligs. In his work, Zelig argued that

Whittaker Chambers Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...

was a psychopathic personality who had framed

Alger Hiss Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in con ...

Background

Zeligs was a 1928 graduate of the University of Cincinnati and a 1932 graduate of its Medical School, before serving as medical officer in the US Navy during World War II. On August 3, 1948,

, a former

U.S. Communist Party The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

member, testified under subpoena before the

House Un-American Activities Committee The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...

that

, an American government official, had secretly been a Communist while in federal service. Although Chambers refused to see Zeligs, the author did correspond with Hiss.

Reaction

''Friendship and Fratricide'' was widely reviewed. In 1978, The New York Times reflected that the work "stirred controversy when it was published in 1967 with the conclusion that Whittaker Chambers was a psychopathic personality". Writing in the ''Archive of General Psychiatry'', one contemporary reviewer described the book as "almost impossible to put down". Another reviewer characterized the work as a novel genre in an article entitled "The Potential of Psychoanalytic Biography". The Harvard Crimson opined that work "only further complicates the already hopelessly complicated questions surrounding Alger Hiss's alleged crime" Time reviewed the book under the title "Slander of a Dead Man" In the 1999 work "The Strange Case of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers", the author argues that "Zeligs was addressing himself to a genuine psychological riddle in writing Friendship and Fratricide."

References

{{Reflist 1967 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Psychoanalytic books