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On coming in professional contact with survivors of Nazi persecutions, psychiatrists are divided into two kinds: those who feel disturbed by the experience and those whose work becomes disturbing to the survivors. The first group despairs over helping the survivors to deal with the aftereffects of the persecutions; the latter cannot find a diagnostic category to fit them and concludes they have no mental illness. Dr. Hoppe tells of his own and other workers' observations that when a survivor applies for restitution, there is a more than one-in-four chance of his being grossly abused, misdiagnosed by a psychiatric examiner, not to mention the subtler forms of mistreatment.
One gains the probably incorrect impression from this paper that Dr. Hoppe's assumption is that if the examiner does function properly and renders his report accurately and faithfully, the survivor is compensated and everything is well. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Most of the claimants' losses cannot be restored or compensated. Emotional and physical damages cannot be repaired. When we talk strictly about pensions, which are supposed to equal the income lost because of disabilities caused by the persecutions, they are so low (calculated on about $100 per month for 100% disability—the majority get $39 per month) as to be only a token. The regulations about treatment are so severe and limited as to be virtually useless, except for limited short-term treatment.
The frustration of grossly inadequate compensation, added to their own yearnings to be restored to their real or idealized pre-persecution condition makes the survivors experience the restitution process as a mockery. Thus the psychiatrist finds himself in a role similar to a concentration camp doctor.
Perhaps in reaction formation to being cast in the role of a collaborator, there is an additional reaction, (a fifth one, if Dr. Hoppe permits me to suggest) that is of the examiner playing God. In this role, he has the urge to compensate t