ABSTRACT
The experience of repression and surviving the experience of repression generally compel people to evaluate or reevaluate their religious convictions. As the repression abated and the political climate thawed in the mid-fifties, it might have been expected that society at large as well as their own social networks would have embraced the returnees and welcomed them back into the fold. While the political system had already recognized the need to change, the cumulative impact of the public airing of individual accounts of repression further discredited the struggling system. Social adaptation was achieved by compensation on a somatic level. Adaptation to the environment is one of the basic survival mechanisms for all life forms. The adaptation to one environment can result in a maladaptation to another environment. Old repressive attitudes prevailed, but there was recognition that in order to continue functioning, the system's characteristic adaptation to repression had to change.
