Did the psychoanalytic movement in Germany limit itself and adapt to the Nazi regime, undergoing a deformation that reaches into the present (as some writers,

such as Maud Mannoni, have argued)? Did such compromises as discrimination against Jewish colleagues and renouncing any mention of Sigmund Freud involve merely human weakness, or opportunism? In contrast, the analysts in Vienna in 1938 and in the Netherlands in 1940 closed their institutes and ceased official activities. The history of the era is complicated, however, because the Nazi attitude toward psychoanalysis was not unambiguous. The central issue is whether the collaboration of analysts in the Göring Institution was a capitulation and betrayal or whether it had its positive side. The author describes his experience as an analytic candidate in Berlin during the war years. He attempts to show that psychoanalysis did not disappear, but was maintained in the Institute, and that there is no simple or straightforward, obvious answer to the questions raised about this period.