Long-Term Psychological Morbidity of Incarceration in Auschwitz Zdzislaw Jan Ryn In the next phase, various complaints are revealed of neurotic or - more frequently - pseudoneurotic character, usually presenting a neurasthenic or anxiety-depressive pattern. In this phase, the organic background of the disturbances can only be felt intuitively. In many cases, this phase turned into a state of deep depression with a mixed psychopathological pattern: reactive, endogenous, and involutive. The next stage in the progress of the concentration-camp disease is premature aging and premature development of general sclerosis. The last stage is the organic phase in which the majority of examinees - already advanced in age - exhibit symptoms of the psycho-organic syndrome with either dementing or characteropathic features, such as encephalopathic syndrome, epilepsy, psychotic episodes of organic type, and so forth. It should be stressed that these phases have no clear-cut boundaries and are often superimposed on each other. Nevertheless, in each case the changes usually proceed in a cycle from the latent phase through personality disturbances, social disadaptation, pseudo-neurotic and depressive disturbances, premature aging, and finally organic disease. Concentration-camp disease is chronic and progressive. Symptoms and organic changes are augmented with the passage of time, a pattern observable in cases of damage to the central nervous system. Nazi concentration camps now belong to history, but their effects persist in the sufferings, troubles, and anxieties of ex-prisoners. The depth of suffering that they sustain today is the most painful consequence of incarceration. The effects of camp stresses are present not only in the individual experiences of the survivors but also in the second generation. The stigma of the concentration camp is probably the most important burden from World War II borne by Polish society. It sets us apart from those nations that were not afflicted by the war and the concentration camps. In conclusion, a prognostic comment may be offered. In the nearest future, or at least while those who suffered camp experience are still alive, further evolution of the concentration-camp disease will undoubtedly take place. Most probably disorders of organic type will remain predominant, but we cannot exclude the possibility that the disease may take another course. But there is no doubt that the concentration-camp disease will persist in the generations to come. The depth and intensity of the camp stresses left in human nature traces so painful that they cannot disappear when the generation of former prisoners is gone. The world still cannot take in what happened in concentration camps. Most probably it will take a long time for people to take it in. Thus, a psychiatric prognosis of survival may refer even to this reality: namely, if a man of the future is to survive, he has to reconcile two opposing attitudes: that of a cosmonaut and an artist (Kepinski, 1992). This was the situation in the camps. In this inhuman world, the ones who survived were those who were able to adopt an abstract attitude of an artist or else an altruistic stand. Even if they perished - their gesture has survived in the human memory. Our young generations are looking for such symbols, which may help in the difficult process of psychotherapy. Polish society carries an indelible stigma of war and concentration camps. It lives with it like with a bleeding but noble scar. If the society tries to erase this stigma, it is because it is still painful, because it hurts. This stigma is history and Polish fortune, but it is also the present and the future. [Page 4 of 4] References Cohen, E.A. (1972). Uwagi o tzw. "KZ-syndromie" (Remarks on the "KZ-syndrome"). 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