Prisoners without a prior identity disintegrated first in camps

Evidence

Bruno Bettelheim, “Behavior in Extreme Situations,” in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 4, 1943, describes the self-esteem of the criminals and the political prisoners as compared with those who have not done anything. The latter “were least able to withstand the initial shock,” the first to disintegrate. Bettelheim blames this on their middle-class origin. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2832

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates the mechanism by which possession of a stable social identity before imprisonment shaped survival capacity.
• XREF: Connects to the Scaffolding module theme of racialized/classed selfhood formation — identity as a protective resource.