Discussion of Klaus D. Hoppe's Article, The Emotional Reactions of Psychiatrists when Confronting Survivors of Persecution

Dr. Hoppe's paper, like others in the recent literature, expresses the frustration and even indignation of psychodynamically trained psychiatrists at the refusal of some of their colleagues, especially in academic psychiatric circles in Germany, to acknowledge that lasting and irreparable damage was inflicted on most concentration camp survivors. Unfortunately, although the West German government seems to exercise a benevolent neutrality by paying for examinations by psychiatrists such as myself and presumably Dr. Hoppe, the final determination of the claims is based on the opinions of the German academic psychiatrists. These, at least in the case of the few I have reviewed, assert a point of view about human behavior which is so almost unbelievably archaic as to suggest a need to rationalize a bias against compensating the survivors.

However, although there is absolutely no question about the fact that significant damage has occurred in the large majority of survivors presenting themselves for evaluation, it is difficult to make an accurate estimate of the degree of disability in percentage terms. This is true not only because of the kinds of distortions in the attitudes of the examiners which Dr. Hoppe describes, but also, because the survivors have not

presented themselves voluntarily at the psychiatrist's office to talk about themselves and hopefully, to change, but as part of a process leading towards financial compensation. As a result their own motivations are likely to be complex, leading to inevitable distortion in their accounts of themselves in the direction either of exaggeration or denial. In fact, the difficulties in trying to apply a numerical value to these complicated scenarios of human suffering is so great that, after having conducted well over 100 such examinations, I am coming to the opinion, which has, I believe, been expressed by Dr. Meerlo, that possibly all that a survivor should have to do is to present evidence of a significant degree of