Beland focuses on the post-war development of the German Psychoanalytic Association through an analysis of the group processes involved. He notes how that group, by obtaining sanction of the International Psychoanalytical Association, came to be seen as the persecuted group of German analysts, while the group headed by Schultz-Hencke was cast in the role of the persecutors—the bad Germans. He explains how this illusion was sustained, in Germany and outside of Germany, until the common heritage of all German analysts, as heirs to the Hitler regime, was gradually but forcibly and painfully brought home to the members of the German Association, who are now in the process of recognizing and dealing with their collective guilt, borne individually.