ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that attributions of ability to work and performance in the Nazi era and in the early FRG became unofficial criteria used to assess the need for institutionalization. I also show how this finding is related to specific historical eras and contrast it with a divergent understanding of a healthy self in the GDR. With reference to medical records, I show that in the latter state, the ability to work ceased almost entirely to play a role in both self- and external attributions. I explain this astonishingly rapid “change in mentality” in light of the rapid restructuring of the working world in the GDR. For ideological reasons, career paths were often closed off and this contributed to self-images in which one's identity revolved less around work and performance. At the same time, operating procedures changed, so that a decline in performance was less noticeable and no longer served as the primary criterion determining deviant behavior.
