Fritz has postulated from an examination of many previous disaster studies the existence of certain positive or therapeutic effects of communitysize disasters. For example, in a paper presented before the Southern Sociological Society in April of 1961, he said the following about the final stage in the development of what he calls the community of sufferers. The structure and forms of interaction adopted by the community of sufferers during this stage can be shown to be both individually and socially therapeutic in nature and effect, in the sense that they: (1) Resolve and ameliorate pre-existing personal and social conflicts that might endanger the present and future continuity of social life; (2) Attenuate or prevent the usual disorganizing individual and small group responses to danger, trauma, loss and privation; (3) Reduce or prevent self-aggressive and anti-social behavior arising from the losses and privations imposed by the disaster; and (4) Re-motivate the actors in the system to devote their energies to socially reconstructive and regenerative tasks. (Fritz, The Therapeutic Aspects of Community Disaster, 1961) The evidence available from the Hurricane Audrey [1958] study does not support Fritz's hypothesis in most of its particulars. For example, the description of the rehabilitation process associated with Audrey and other observations point instead to the following facts. (1) While it may have been true that certain interpersonal conflicts which had loomed large to people before the storm were temporarily reduced, it is equally if not more true that new conflicts arose which were more severe in consequence for the social system than those that had existed before. Furthermore, old community and political loyalties seemed to form the axis around which new and serious conflicts developed. (Bates, The Social and Psychological Consequences of a Natural Disaster, 1963, p. 61)