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.
This fascinating but painful symposium addresses itself primarily to the psychopathology of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. William Niederland describes the 'survivor syndrome', based on observations of eight hundred survivors, as consisting of: 1, anxiety with associated phobias, insomnia, and nightmares; 2, disturbances of cognition and memory; 3, chronic depressive states associated with 'survivor guilt'; 4, tendency to isolation, withdrawal, brooding, unstable object relationships, and marked ambivalence; 5, psychotic and psychosis-like pictures; 6, alteration of personal identity; 7, psychosomatic conditions; and 8, a 'living corpse' appearance and behavior. The most prevalent manifestation is a chronic state of anxious, bland depression. Very often these patients cannot verbalize the traumatic events. Niederland is particularly impressed by the 'all pervasive guilt' of these survivors.
Alfred Lorenzer describes the puzzling 'latency period' that often exists between the traumatic internment and the appearance of symptoms. He feels that there occurs an ego split with blanket denial of the traumatization, and a 'super-normal' kind of functioning. At a later date some small additional insult overstresses the system, and the patient decompensates into clinical illness.
Erich Simenauer, speaking from personal experience, describes the very rapid personality disorganization that occurs in prison inmates. He feels that 'it is beyond reasonable doubt that previous personality plays a relatively small part in the psychic sequelæ of ex-prisoners of Nazi camps'. This raises some interesting questions about the genetic principle in psychoanalytic theory.
Martin Wangh puts forth the notion that a predisposition to seek war in the resolution of conflicts results from the stresses of a previous war which so traumatized these individuals that they seek a repetition of the traumatic events in accord with the 'repetition compulsion'. He feels that a trauma in