You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The authors studied thirty cases affected by governmental security regulations, which directly or indirectly caused prolongation, interruption, or termination of treatment. In some cases, guilt and anxiety were created or intensified; patients demonstrated withdrawal, hostility, projection, and similar evidence of increased emotional ill health; and panic and paranoid trends occurred in some patients to the verge of psychosis. Persons with shaky but adequate adaptation to life broke down with considerable resultant damage. The security program embodies a special kind of threat, more difficult to face than other problems, perhaps because the security procedures are impersonal and overwhelming and to a striking degree destructive of a man's career. The community is more hostile to victims of security procedures than to persons found guilty of other forms of socially disapproved behavior. The program tends to increase the intolerance of society toward its deviant or nonconforming members, especially homosexuals. The therapist of these patients must carefully watch his own attitudes toward conformity and toward the kinds of behavior that he considers personally or socially desirable. The effect of the security program may soon be so serious as to constitute a national threat to emotional stability.