The background of the investigated persons and their personality before arrest

Abstract

A judicious psychiatrical investigation cannot rely solely upon a description and registration of present symptoms and findings. One must also attempt — and in many cases it cannot be more than an attempt — to throw light on their genesis. The changes shown may be purely habitual for a certain person who was ‘always’ like this; they can have occurred quite independently of the captivity in the concentration camp (and of the persecutions of which the incarceration was the culmination), or they can be a direct result of these conditions. I wish to admit at once that the decision was extremely difficult in many cases, and that the conclusions will often be based more on probabilities than on proofs. In order to reduce the long series of doubtful factors which naturally enough encumber the task, I will, in the following, attempt to throw light on the background of the investigated persons and on their experiences during and after the War, before I describe their psychiatric symptoms and syndromes. Only when this is done will it be possible to set the present findings in a causal relationship to the duress experienced or to reject such a relationship.