Psychiatric journals rejected survivor testimony as unverifiable exaggeration

Evidence

Looking back, Bettelheim wrote in his Surviving: Unfortunately, for well over a year, this paper was rejected by one after another of the psychiatric and psychoanalytic journals to which I sent it, thinking that they were most likely to be willing to print it. The reasons for rejection varied. Some editors objected because I had not kept written records while in the camps, implicitly revealing that they had not believed a word of what I had written about conditions in the camps. Others refused it because the data were not verifiable, or because the findings could not be replicated. A few came right out and said that both what I claimed were facts and my conclusions were mostly improbable exaggerations. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 403

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School’s broader story of institutional resistance to uncomfortable émigré scholarship in the US. — connects to: Psychiatric journals rejected early Holocaust testimony because it was unverifiable and unbelievable — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1619; Journals rejected Bettelheim’s camp paper because the camps seemed unbelievable — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1619
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Psychiatric journals rejected early Holocaust testimony because it was unverifiable and unbelievable — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1619; Journals rejected Bettelheim’s camp paper because the camps seemed unbelievable — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1619

Broader Connections

• Psychiatric journals rejected early Holocaust testimony because it was unverifiable and unbelievable #corroborates (0.98) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1619