Long-term prisoners shifted from preserving identity to adapting to camp life

Evidence

Bettelheim, op. cit., describes how “the main concern of the new prisoners seemed to be to remain intact as a personality” while the problem of the old prisoners was “how to live as well as possible within the camp.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2840

Categorization

• XREF: This is the survival-of-the-personality mechanism that reappears in the Scaffolding module’s account of how dehumanizing institutions erode prior identity and normalize adaptation. — connects to: Bettelheim’s camp study showed prisoners identifying with their SS captors — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1618