VIRUS Band 14, pp. 015-034, 2020/07/23
Schwerpunkt: Gesellschaft und Psychiatrie in Österreich 1945 bis ca. 1970
Although psychiatry in Germany was devastated after 1945 by the involvement of manyGerman psychiatrists in Nazi-“euthanasia”, the continuities in the hospitalization of patients and of therapy still existed. Change took place not only through the influence of the social psychiatry emerging in Great Britain and the USA, but through the critical debate onNazi-crimes that started in the German society after World War II and especially following the students’ movement after 1968. Young psychiatrists then did not only condemn these crimes, but also excoriated the deplorable situation in the asylums and became forerunners of changes in the asylums themselves and in the therapy applied. All this led to the psychiatry-Enquete that was issued by the parliament in 1975 and is still the basis of every reform in psychiatry.
Keywords: Nazi-“euthanasia”, the Nuremberg-trials against doctors, “euthanasia”-trials, electro-shock therapy, occupational therapy, psychiatry-Enquete, psychotherapy, suppression of Nazi crimes, social psychiatry, involvement of psychiatry in Nazi-crimes
