„… mennél több bolondot kell termelni az államnak”. A társadalom alakíthatóságának élettani határai, 1952
”… more fools have to be produced for the state”. The Physiological Limits of Stalinist Social Engineering, 1952

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the psychological effects of Stalinist social engineering in Hungary in the early 1950s through the memoirs of a former warden and the patient files of the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. The life stories reveal pathogenic factors such as overwork, identity rupture, abrupt social mobility, and the politicization of everyday life. The experiences of psychiatric patients as a minority also provide insight into the conflicts of the majority within society. An important finding of the study is that not only did the obvious victims show symptoms of mental illness, but even the most privileged leaders found that Soviet voluntarism encountered not only economic obstacles or even social resistance but also a more elementary limitation: the limits of their own physical and mental capacity.

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