The author, a former concentration camp inmate, attacks the classical analytic position that 'external events, no matter how overwhelming, precipitate a neurosis only when they touch on specific unconscious conflicts'. He argues that the camp inmate experienced horrors which go beyond any infantile prototype, and that these experiences by themselves can so damage the ego that it can never repair itself completely. He also takes issue with some of Bettelheim's discussion of the camp experience. Clinical material is presented, as well as several of the author's post-internment dreams.