The Devil's Castle

Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today

By: Susanne Paola Antonetta

Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny

The Devil’s Castle delves into the forgotten history of eugenics and links it to present-day psychiatry to explain how we as a culture continue to get mind care so wrong

In The Devil’s Castle, Susanne Paola Antonetta weaves a haunting narrative that confronts the darkest chapters of psychiatric history while offering a bold vision for the future of mental health care. In 1939, the eugenics movement growing throughout the West did its worst in Nazi Germany. Through the Aktion T4 euthanasia program, five asylums and an abandoned jail were transformed into gas chambers. Tens of thousands of lives—predominantly adults with neuropsychiatric conditions—were extinguished in those structures, ultimately paving the way for the horrors of the Holocaust.

Interlacing her experiences of psychosis with the complex history of psychiatry, Antonetta sheds light on the intersections of madness and societal perceptions of mental difference. She brings to life the stories of Paul Schreber and Dorothea Buck, two historical figures who act as models for mind care and acceptance.

This gripping exploration traverses the spectrum of neurodiversity, from the devastating consequences of dehumanization to the transformative potential of understanding and acceptance. With The Devil’s Castle, Antonetta not only unearths the failures of our past, but also envisions a more compassionate, enlightened approach to consciousness and mental health care. This is a story of tragedy, resilience, and hope—a rallying cry for change that dares to challenge the limits of how we define and support the human mind.

©2025 Susanne Paola Antonetta (P)2025 Recorded Books

A mixed bag

I listened to this book after reading a review in the WSJ. Having finished it, I report that it was disappointing. The book tries to do too much, some of which is excellent and some simply frustrating. First of all, this author can write, I’ll give her that. And the narration was excellent. It was at its best discussing the horrors of the Nazi T4 euthanasia project and the failure to hold many of the protagonists responsible. I was also enlightened about the history of eugenics, which maintained its hold in the US far longer than I expected. In 1927. the US Supreme Court allowed the sterilization of certain mentally ill citizens!! The book is in part a memoir, and the author’s history of mental illness, medical mismanagement, drug dependence, and child abuse was presented in a raw and effective manner. It allowed the listener to see the world through the eyes of a patient with depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Less interesting to me was the mini-biographies of Paul Schreber and Dorothea Buck, two patients who had mental illness and, like the author, fought the system and came to live with their neurodiversity. I disliked two other significant plot lines in the book. First, the author tries to make the case that the modern psychiatric practices are similar to what the murdering Nazi’s did in the T4 euthanasia project, a conclusion that is wrong, wildly unsupported and highly offensive. Second, the author pulls no punches on her hatred of all-things psychiatry. At times, I reads like a propaganda piece prepared by Scientology, well-known for its anti-psychiatry position. The author demonizes most psychiatrists, psychiatric drugs, the companies that make them, psychiatric hospitals, and the diagnostic criteria of psychiatric illness codified in the DSM in its various iterations. Everyone is in it for the money. Patients get misdiagnosed, just as in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the background story of which proves the simple medical truism that patients who lie about their symptoms are often misdiagnosed. What was most frustrating about the book is the author offers no real solutions. At one point she suggests people who are depressed should not take antidepressant medicine but should just endure their pain because things will ultimately get better, a particular cruel approach given the high rate of suicide in depressed patients. I kept waiting—if not psychiatrists, then what; if not drugs, then what; if not psychiatric hospitals, then what; if not DSM, then what? The closest the author came to a solution was the notion that we just need to talk more with the neurodiverse population and allow them to live out their own realities. These was little science offered for this solution. What could have turned into a book of enlightenment and potential reform just struck me as an angry screed.