Rousso stated that France was suffering from an "illness due to its past". He described four stages in the evolution of the syndrome in terms that have echoes in psychoanalytic discourse, speaking of the first stage as "unresolved grief" () due to the pressing post-war objectives of consolidating the military victory and rebuilding the country which left no room for introspection about the massive internal power struggles which were in fact a more powerful factor roiling France than even the
Nazi occupation. Stage two, "repression" () occurred during the economic boom years of 1954 to 1971, consisting of the casting into oblivion any memory of the hardships but also of the ideological divisions, and class- and race-based hatred that were institutionalized during Vichy. This view was epitomized by
de Gaulle's War Memoirs, where he professed his "certain idea of France" based on his traditionalist, patriotic values. In stage three, which Rousso labeled the "broken mirror", the "certain idea of France" was eroded by the events of
May 68, a cultural ticking time bomb, which eventually flattened the guardrails of memory carefully constructed by de Gaulle with the help of his leftist opposition. The erosion continued with the release of the 1969 documentary
The Sorrow and the Pity about the collaboration between the Vichy government and Nazi Germany, and the bombshell finally exploded with the
historiographical revolution brought about by the release in France of
La France de Vichy by
Robert Paxton, which crushed previous views of Vichy, typified by that of
Robert Aron, under an avalanche of evidence, precipitating intense and acrimonious debate in France. This brief phase only lasted a few years, until 1974, when the next phase, which Rousso called "obsession", began, characterized by a "return to repression". Bit by bit, the taboos began to fall, and parts of the real story leaked out, including, finally, a broadcast of "The Sorrow and the Pity" in the 1980s for the first time. Antics of far-right politicians such as
Jean-Marie le Pen kept traditionalist views before the public, and some well-publicized war crimes trials, such as those of
Klaus Barbie,
René Bousquet, and
Paul Touvier kept the "black years" of Vichy in the public eye throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Historian
Pierre Nora views Rousso as a not atypical member of the post-war generation, schooled on views like those of
Robert Aron whose history of France under Vichy described Vichy France as a nation of people fully supportive of the Resistance with the exception of a few traitorous exceptions. But this was also the generation heavily influenced by events of
May 1968, tending left, and then shaken by the
Paxtonian revolution of the early 1970s. Rousso's reaction, in Nora's view, was that Rousso flipped the script and viewed France under Vichy as generally collaborationist, with the exception of a few heroes. == Debate ==