[Compensation for National Socialist Persecution as a Catalyst for a Paradigm Shift - A Contribution to the History of Psychiatry in the Early Federal Republic of Germany].

OBJECTIVE

After WW II, Holocaust survivors often faced negative assessments by German psychiatrists when claiming compensation for psychological damage, a fact that was met with criticism. This study examines how as a result the prevailing doctrine on trauma sequelae underwent a transformation.

METHODS

Academic contributions in German language from 1946 to 1969 are analyzed for their para-digmatic views on the etiology of mental disorders after war and Nazi persecution.

RESULTS

Only a new generation of psychiatrists was able to develop more adequate psychotraumatological concepts by using anthropological and occasionally psychoanalytic theoretical elements. At the same time this also questioned the medically oriented concept of illness in psychiatry.

CONCLUSION

Less the persistence of anti-Semitic sentiments but rather internal scientific reasons such as an unevidenced dogmatism obstructed the the advancement of science.