Author's Response

I greatly appreciate the discussants' interesting and useful comments. As they undoubtedly know from their own experience, in presenting a brief clinical communication of this type, one accumulates notes that amount to several times the volume of the completed text. Actually, it occurred to me at times that it would be easier to write a fully documented case study (or monograph) on the subject than to focus on some specific points and thereby confront the problem of what to select for a condensed presentation from the multi-faceted material.

In fact, Dr. Galdston's mention of Eitinger's book, Concentration Camp Survivors in Norway and Israel, is a case in point. It has numerous omissions, including misquotations from my own writings on their problems. Nor does it deal with the dynamics and other psychological features of what I have called—for brevity and want of a better name—the “survivor syndrome.” As I stated explicitly, my observations in this case were derived from a study of exiles and refugees in the more ordinary sense, not of concentration camp victims.

I also mentioned the fact that gamblers usually do not seek help because of their gambling per se, but for different reasons. I fully agree with Dr. Galdston, however, that in presenting my material and considering the so-called gambling neurosis or “the gambler,” I should have specified that I was speaking of “the compulsive gambler” whose psychopathology I attempted to elucidate, at least in some heretofore insufficiently explored areas.

I was impressed by Dr. Greenson's and Dr. Harkavy's stimulating discussions which have added further clarifying data for the understanding of the problem.

Also, Dr. Harris' viewpoint is pertinent in this context. As I do, he sees the depressive manifestations of the compulsive gambler in the light of trauma and traumatogenic regressive processes leading to earlier levels of psychic functioning.

Dr. Chodoff's observations are generally along more or less similar lines. His view