Money-Kyrle was born in
Hertfordshire in 1898. He was the fourth child and only son surviving childhood of Audley and Florence Money-Kyrle. Sent to boarding school aged 10 and graduating from
Eton aged 18, he immediately enlisted in the
Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. He was shot down once in Northern France. At the end of the war, he resumed his studies at
Trinity College, Cambridge, pursuing a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics, then shifting his attention to
philosophy. He became interested in psychoanalysis, and began analysis with
Ernest Jones in 1919. He married Helen Juliet Rachel "Minora" Fox, an anthropologist he met in Cambridge during their studies, and they had four children. In 1919, he moved to
Vienna for four years, where he worked on his PhD in philosophy, while continuing his analysis with
Sigmund Freud. He later described his thesis "Contribution to the theory of reality" as psychoanalysis disguised as philosophy. While visiting Germany prior to
Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor, Money-Kyrle attended multiple campaign rallies and became intrigued by how political speech used by such authoritarian movements morphs into manipulation and propaganda where political
illusions (Freudian sense) replace rational policy solutions. He wrote: The speeches were not particularly impressive. But the crowd was unforgettable. The people seemed gradually to lose their individuality and to become fused into a not very intelligent but immensely powerful monster [that was] under the complete control of the figure on the rostrum [who] evoked or changed its passions as easily as if they had been notes of some gigantic organ. The three notes described in his article "The Psychology of Propaganda" is a progression that was repeated at each rally. "Each listener felt a part of its [the movement's] omnipotence within himself. He was transported into a new psychosis. The induced
melancholia passed into
paranoia, and the paranoia into
megalomania." For ten minutes we heard of the sufferings of Germany . . . since the war. The monster seemed to indulge in an orgy of self-pity. Then for the next ten minutes came the most terrific fulminations against Jews and Social-democrats as the sole authors of these sufferings. Self-pity gave place to hate; and the monster seemed on the point of becoming homicidal. But the note was changed once more; and this time we heard for ten minutes about the growth of the Nazi party, and how from small beginnings it had now become an overpowering force. The monster became self-conscious of its size, and intoxicated by the belief in its own omnipotence. . . . Hitler ended . . . on a passionate appeal for all Germans to unite. Returning to England, he attended
University College London and pursued his second PhD – in
anthropology – under the direction of
John Carl Flügel. His thesis entitled "The Meaning of Sacrifice" was presented and defended in 1929. On the basis of this first psychoanalytic work he was elected a fellow of the
Royal Anthropological Institute. In 1936, he entered analysis with
Melanie Klein. During the Second World War, he worked for the
Air Ministry which sent him after the war to Germany to help identify suitable individuals to govern Germany, working with
John Rickman at the German Personnel Research Branch, in
Berlin. Upon his return to London, he carried on activities as a psychoanalyst and essayist, contributing to the
Kleinian theoretical development and to the cultural and social application of phenomena generally linked to philosophy and sociology. == Work ==