The memory of concentration camp survivors

This study is concerned with the question whether extremely emotional experiences, such as being the victim of Nazi concentration camps, leave traces in memory that cannot be extinguished. Relevant data were obtained from testimony by 78 witnesses in a case against Marinus De Rijke, who was accused of Nazi crimes in Camp Erika in The Netherlands. The testimonies were collected in the periods 1943–1947 and 1984–1987. A comparison between these two periods reveals the amount of forgetting that occurred in 40 years. Results show that camp experiences were generally well-remembered, although specific but essential details were forgotten. Among these were forgetting being maltreated, forgetting names and appearance of the torturers, and forgetting being a witness to murder. Apparently intensity of experiences is not a sufficient safeguard against forgetting. This conclusion has consequences for the forensic use of testimony by witnesses who were victims of violent crimes.     

Personality correlates of heroic rescue during the holocaust

This study investigated the extent to which personality variables can be used to discriminate non-Jewish heroes of the Holocaust from bystanders and from a comparison group of prewar European immigrants who left their countries of origin prior to World War II. Eighty verified rescuers, 73 bystanders, and 43 immigrants were administered measures of locus of control, autonomy, risk taking, social responsibility, tolerance/authoritarianism, empathy, and altruistic moral reasoning. A three-group discriminant function analysis was able to correctly classify 80.2% of the sample by a combination of personality and demographic variables. When the bystanders and immigrants, who differed very little from each other, were grouped together and compared to the rescuers, the personality variables alone correctly classified 93.1% of the sample. Implications regarding the relationship between personality and altruistic behavior, as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Psychotherapy with the adolescent children of concentration camp survivors

Summary The offspring of people who have experienced overwhelming physical and mental trauma may themselves manifest some of the aftereffects of their parents' trauma. Some children of survivors manifest aspects of their parents' survivor syndrome. These children appear depressed, withdrawn and have difficulty establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships. In psychotherapy, an important focus is helping the patient establish an identity that is free of the persecutory and depressive elements of the survivor syndrome. Crucial aspects of psychotherapy with survivors' children involve helping the patient deal with the emotional impoverishment and depression of his parents and alleviating resulting guilt feelings. A therapeutic approach that is both nurturant and firm seems essential to provide restitution for the affectional deprivation and to set limits for the survivors' child. Of important concern for the therapist are countertransference attitudes which may lead to rejecting the adolescent.     

Sharing the holocaust experience: communication behaviors and their consequences in families of ex-partisans and ex-prisoners of concentration camps

This study concerns the manner in which the traumatic events suffered by the parent in the Nazi holocaust are communicated to the second generation born after the Second World War. Additionally we investigated the effects of differences in wartime experiences on subsequent communication behaviors. Communication behaviors in families whose parents had been prisoners in concentration camps were compared with those of families who had displayed active resistance (i.e., were partisans) during the Second World War. The data indicate greater legitimacy and openness in discussing holocaust-related issues in the homes of ex-partisans than in the homes of ex-prisoners in concentration camps. Also, sons and daughters of the former group have better knowledge of the holocaust and hold more favorable attitudes than do sons and daughters in the second group. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Positive work experiences and life satisfaction: the moderating role of gender

This study investigated the effects of work engagement and psychological meaningfulness on life satisfaction taking into account the moderating effect of gender. A cross-sectional research design was used to capture data on satisfaction with life, work engagement and psychological meaningfulness. The sample consisted of 796 employees from various companies in South Africa (women?=?65.9%; aged between 18 and 67). The results showed work engagement and psychological meaningfulness to significantly predict life satisfaction. A significant interaction effect for gender was found on the relationships between work engagement on life satisfaction and psychological meaningfulness on work engagement respectively. The results indicated that men showed a higher level of life satisfaction when work engagement was high. Women showed lower levels of life satisfaction the more they engage in their work. Women further experienced a higher level of work engagement compared to men; however, the relationship between psychological meaningfulness and work engagement was stronger for men. The more psychological meaningfulness men experience, the more they will engage-unlike women, who tend to experience work engagement irrespective of psychological meaningfulness.     

Measurement of adolescents' life events: The junior high life experiences survey

The first of these two studies examined the relationship between adolescents' scores on a social desirability questionnaire and scores of negative, positive, and total life events. Only number of positive events was significantly related to social desirability. The second study compared various scoring strategies with respect to their intercorrelation and their ability to predict adolescents' maladjustment (depression, anxiety, and number of missed school days). The results demonstrated that (a) total number of events and readjustment-weighted life change scores were equally predictive of the maladjustment criteria; (b) negative events, but not positive events, however scored, were significantly related to the maladjustment criteria; (c) indices based on psychologist-judges' ratings of event desirability were not more predictive of the maladjustment criteria than were indices based on the adolescents' self-reports; and (d) uncontrollable negative events and controllable negative events were equally predictive of the maladjustment criteria.     

The evolution of mental disturbances in the concentration camp syndrome (KZ-syndrom)

As a result of long-term clinical research on former prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps, I analyzed the evolution of the clinical and psychopathological pattern of the KZ-syndrome. One can differentiate the following characteristic phases: psychosomatic inanition, latency of disease, personality and adaptation disturbances, a pseudo-neurotic and depressive phase, premature aging, and an organic phase. The stigma of KZ-syndrome is present in a second generation in different forms: personality disturbances, emotional and/or social immaturity, social disadaptation, higher frequency of neurotic states, divorce, alcoholism, and suicide. The camp stress has left in human nature traces so painful that they cannot disappear when the generation of former prisoners is gone.     

Narcissism and recollections of early life experiences

Recent studies have found associations between narcissistic personality features and retrospective accounts of early experiences. The current study sought to extend these previous findings by examining whether adaptive and maladaptive features of narcissism were associated with recollections of early life experiences in a non-clinical sample of undergraduate students (N = 334). Results revealed that the Entitlement/Exploitativeness feature of narcissism was associated with low security, high parental discipline, and high threats of separation. Narcissistic Grandiosity was positively associated with peer affectional support and parental discipline, whereas Narcissistic Vulnerability was not uniquely associated with memories of early life experiences. The results provide partial support for models of narcissism in which parents are recalled as failing to provide a secure base while inducing threats of separation and discipline.     

Event memory: temporal-order judgments of personal life experiences

Three experiments with undergraduate subjects investigated the mental representations that people form when they recall and chronologically order their personal experiences. Subjects in each study first recalled five events that occurred to them in two general periods of their life (e.g., high school and college). Later, they saw pairs of these events and judged the order in which they occurred. It typically took less time to compare events that occurred in different time periods than events that occurred in the same period. However, response times depended on the serial positions of the compared events in each time period, and the distance between them, in ways that varied over the three experiments. These effects were interpreted in terms of a model of event memory and judgment proposed by Wyer, Shoben, Fuhrman, and Bodenhausen (1985). Specifically, subjects appear to organize the events they are asked to recall into categories defined by the periods of life in which they occurred and assign temporal codes to these categories. However, they do not perform a more detailed temporal coding of the events they recall unless a coherent temporal representation of these events is difficult to construct. A direct comparison between judgments of personal experiences and judgments of others' experiences suggested that people may make more detailed temporal coding of others' experiences than they do of their own.