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The Continuing Forum is open to all readers so that they may send their reactions, suggestions, criticism and contributions to the topics which are presented in The Psychoanalytic Forum.
To the Editors: I enjoyed Dr. Hoppe's concentration camp paper and the comments upon it by such outstanding analysts [“The Psychodynamics of Concentration Camp Victims,” The Psychoanalytic Forum, Vol. 1, No. 1].
Whatever insights these scientists give us, however, are clouded by an attitude which is pervasive over this delicate matter. I do not refer to the ordinary sympathy one feels for any tragedy but rather to a kind of defensive pity and a fear of the victims lest they may now suffer on our doorstep if we attach to them any of the responsibility for what happened.
For example, we would not hesitate to point out gently, or perhaps not so gently, to the battered wife of an abusive alcoholic that she might have a need to provoke, or even has somehow provoked, the brute to beat her. Despite this necessary clinical objectivity, examine the emotionally infantile reaction of so-called “sympathizers” to Bettelheim's suggestion that perhaps part of the reason for Jews dying in concentration camps was the character of the victim.
He had, of course, every right as a Jew and a scientist to examine the situation in that light. And at the risk of further condemnation, I would like to pose several other questions in regard to the interdynamics of Nazis and concentration camp Jews:
What happens in a sadomasochistic relationship when both parties assume their mutual unconscious roles in reality?
Then: What are the psychological after-effects of allowing a sadist, for instance, to live out his destructive joy? And what happens to a masochist when you encourage him to express his happy need to be tortured and destroyed, not forgetting that one of the chief object motivations of a masochist is to make his persecutor and all who associate with him feel guilty?
My third consideration is more within the for