Autonomy in the Extreme Situation: Bruno Bettelheim, the Nazi Concentration Camps and the Mass Society

Bettelheim upheld that the inmate’s struggle in a concentration camp is the extreme example of the modern dilemma of maintaining autonomy in the depersonalizing mass society, such as the in the United States and Western Europe. This study elucidates, critiques and further develops Bettelheim’s pathbreaking and controversial insights on the behaviour of concentration camp inmates. It provides the rudiments of a new framework for conceptualizing inmate behaviour and presents a treatment of Bettelheim’s views on the dangers of contemporary society. The author accomplishes his goals in part by drawing from such social theorists as Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens, Erving Goffman, Zygmunt Bauman and Emmanuel Levinas, as well as psychoanalytically oriented thinkers such as Roy Schafer. The book concludes with a discussion of the significance of Bettelheim’s findings about inmate behaviour in the camps, and how we in our mass society can protect ourselves, resist and fight back against the assaults on our autonomy, individuality and humanity.