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Supported by the Foundation for the Study of the Dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic [GDR, Stiftung zu Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur], the authors, from the Sigmund Freud Institute, Frankfurt-am-Main, report the findings of a psychoanalytic investigation of former unofficial collaborators2 with the East German State Security Ministry. The book is one of a series of researches into East German society.
Application of psychoanalytical techniques to a political project is clearly within the tradition of Alexander Mitscherlich (Mitscherlich and Mitscherlich, 1975). The authors’ aim was to understand the conscious and unconscious motives of GDR citizens in collaborating with the State Security Service and to determine the possible psychic effects of their conspiratorial activity 14 years after the dismantling of the socialist party dictatorship, as well as the motives behind their consent to participate in this investigation. With the help of the government official formerly in charge of the records for the GDR State Security Service, whose colleague, Helmut Müller-Enbergs, examined the files and contributed a chapter to the book about them, 20 people were identified: 9 women and 11 men. Though not a representative sample of former unofficial collaborators, they consented to examination of their life histories using semistructured interviews. The interviews lasted 3-5 hours and were recorded on audiotape. A team of experts consisting of five psychoanalysts assessed the transcripts using an evaluation form. These were linked to the files of the Stasi (a German acronym for the East German Secret Police), an unusual approach for a psychoanalytic study, made necessary by the