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During recent years, a high tide of scientific books and articles concerned with the victims of German concentration camps has flooded the previously arid shores of the public's consciousness. Especially in Germany, many publications have reflected a need to overcome the anxiety-ridden denial of guilt and shame. Sustaining unbelievably gruesome experiences of the victims by emphatic reflections, some psychiatrists have attempted to do justice to the survivors in helping them to obtain restitution from the Federal Government of West Germany. Beyond that, new diagnostic concepts were developed, some of them bases on psychodynamic considerations.
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate connections between clinical findings and the psychoanalytic theory of the superego. The psychodynamics of the mass murderer are also discussed in order to clarify the different defense mechanisms and coping devices. Finally, a distinction between neurotic and existential guilt is repudiated, making for a clear-cut psychoanalytic concept.
Recent psychoanalytic investigations of the superego, based on Freud's work,11,12,13,14,15,16 have focused mainly upon the forerunners of the superego.1,18,28,30,32