Separation-individuation conflicts in children of Holocaust Survivors

This article examines the developmental conflicts of children of Holocaust Survivors with specific emphasis on psychic trauma and second-generation Survivor effects. Issues related to depression, guilt, and aggression are discussed in relation to Mahler's separation-individuation process. Developmental failures at early phases may predispose these children toward low self-esteem, narcissistic vulnerability, identity problems, and impairments in interpersonal relations. The need for further research and clinical investigation is emphasized to help develop preventive measures and attenuate the effects of the Holocaust on future generations.     

The legacy is loss

Psychotherapy with the second generation of Holocaust Survivors involves understanding that the Survivors and their offsprings are not a homogeneous group. Numerous variables, such as the age of the Survivor during the Holocaust period, the nature of the experiences, and the length of time the Survivor was imprisoned, all affect the Survivor's adaptive or maladaptive reactions. Recommendations for treating the second generation of Survivors include ascertaining the extent of loss experienced by the parents and their preoccupation with depression and mourning. It is also important to elicit whether the parents were overinvested in their children, affectively impoverished, excessively anxious and overprotective, or able to separate from the Holocaust and invest anew in their new life and family. Further suggestions for treatment are the therapist's need to be aware of countertransference reactions that may duplicate Survivor reactions to their offspring. Flexibility in treating the second generation is also indicated and may call for playing the role of auxiliary ego or, at times, even parent surrogate.     

Using personal and fictional documents to assess psychosocial development: a case study of Vera Brittain's generativity

Adult diaries and novels written by the British feminist and pacifist Vera Brittain (1893-1970) were content analyzed for Eriksonian themes of identity, intimacy, and generativity. Brittain's concerns with identity and intimacy decreased over time, while her generative concerns increased, suggesting that she expressed the issue of generativity vs. stagnation in her mid-life diaries and fiction. The large number of identity themes relative to both intimacy and generativity provokes speculations about Brittain's personality, the characteristics of writers, the influence of gender, the impact of society, and the possibility that the crisis of identity vs. role confusion involves the last major structural change in personality development. This archival case study is consistent with Erikson's notion of a sequence of concerns with psychosocial issues, although directions for theoretical revision and elaboration are discussed.     

Can learning about the Holocaust be spiritual? Reflections on a teaching and learning experience with Primary School children.

In April 2017, I spent a week in Poland researching the Holocaust in Europe. Most notably, I visited the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. Following the visit, I facilitated three History lessons with 10- and 11-year-old children on the role of Auschwitz in the Second World War. As the sessions unfolded, the spiritual themes of meaning, identity and remembering emerged from the children’s responses; therefore, this article forms a reflection on how the lessons impacted the children’s spiritual lives. It also considers how the History curriculum might include a critical dimension to pedagogy. In particular, it explores how issues such as theology, morality and the role of representation open up a space for critical questioning. I suggest that such questioning is also spiritual. Thus, the self-awareness and criticality inspired might contribute to transformation – of both the teachers and learners and the world around them.     

Anna Freud and the Holocaust: Mourning and survival guilt

This article explores the period of Anna Freud's life after she was informed of the deaths of her aunts in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Understanding of this period may be enhanced by consideration of the role of the Holocaust in her complicated mourning process. A series of her dreams is re‐examined from the point of view of survivor guilt and the complicated mourning of her father in the context of the Holocaust. It is argued that unconscious reproaches against her father led to an identification with him that included his ‘decision’ to leave his sisters in Vienna. Survivor guilt in relation to her aunts’ murders is seen as one of the complicating factors in the mourning process. In addition the article discusses the possible role of this period, particularly her work with child concentration camp survivors, in her post‐war writing. The noted duality in her work between innovation and conservatism is explored in terms of an outcome of the mourning process of this period. It is argued that her views on mourning, trauma, attachment, and the widening scope of indications for psychoanalysis were influenced by the outcome of her mourning process. Finally, an irony is noted in the fact that her attitude about altruism never changed despite the role of the altruism of others in her rescue from the Nazis.     

A Phenomenological Inquiry of Identity Development,Same‐Sex Attraction,and Religious Upbringing

Growing up in religious/spiritual communities often creates identity issues for lesbian and gay individuals. In this phenomenological study, the authors investigated the experiences of 25 lesbian and gay individuals who self‐identified as having been raised within organized religious communities. Participants described that these communities were affirming, tolerant, or nonaffirming. Accordingly, emergent themes indicated that the current spiritual lives of participants varied greatly depending on their experiences of identity integration and affirmation. Implications for counselors and researchers are discussed.     

Holocaust Survivors in Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox Jewish populations

This article reports on Holocaust survivorship amongst Hasidim and ultra-Orthodox groups. The role of the social and religious set in organizing response to the Holocaust is traced. Unique dream phenomena in this group, with brief clinical vignettes, is provided. Often recurring clinical syndromes in the Hasidic Survivor population are discussed. A detailed case history with 'a strategic therapeutic approach is provided, and other treatment considerations are explored. The response possibilities of the system memory in traumatized individuals are outlined, and the centrality of activity-passivity conflicts in Survivors is noted.     

Reconstructing Life Stories of Holocaust Survivors Through Art

This article discusses the late works of two women Holocaust survivors, Esther Nisenthal Krinitz and Ilana Ravek, as seen through the prism of the artistic reconstructing of a life story. Their life stories are expressed in works depicting their Holocaust experiences together with additional “rehabilitation” works illustrating elements such as their childhood before the Holocaust, their establishment of families afterwards, their experience of parenthood and grandparenthood, their successful resettlement in their new countries and their acquisition of a new national identity. Each of these artists' work represents a different approach to the construction of a life story. Nisenthal Krinitz's art works exemplify a linear narrative approach, displaying a sequence of events arranged chronologically in an interrelated plot at whose centre stands her Holocaust story, wrapped by works depicting her life before and afterwards. Ravek's works, which are not limited to her Holocaust experience and its ramifications, demonstrate the second approach, which requires far more active involvement on the part of the viewer. Both artists' life stories express a conflicted ambivalent consciousness, as tragic depictions coexist side by side with images of rehabilitation. The enfolding of the past in the present assists them in their reconstruction of a consecutive identity that has a past, present, and future and enables them to give meaning to their life after their survival.     

National Days,National Identity,and Collective Memory: Exploring the Impact of Holocaust Day in Israel

This study uses the case of Holocaust Day in Israel to examine the premise that national days impact national identity and collective memory. Specifically, the study examines whether a very unique type of national day—Holocaust Day—impacts national identification, nationalism, and collective memory in the form of Israeli Jews' perceptions of the “lessons” of the Holocaust. This study uses panel survey design data on national identity and perceptions of the Holocaust's lessons from the same sample of Israeli Jews (N = 665) collected two months prior to Holocaust Day and again during and after Holocaust Day. During and after Holocaust Day, respondents expressed increased levels of nationalism and more perceptions of both particularistic and universalistic Holocaust lessons. Participation in Holocaust Day practices had a stronger relationship with nationalism and national identification during Holocaust Day than before but a weaker relationship with the perception of a universalistic lesson during Holocaust Day. These findings indicate that Holocaust Day impacts national identity and collective memory and highlights the multifaceted nature of the relationships between national identity, collective memory, and national days. The theoretical implication of the findings as well as the case comparability are discussed in light of the findings.     

Holocaust <Emphasis Type="Italic">Laughter</Emphasis> and Edgar Hilsenrath’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Nazi and the Barber</Emphasis>: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Laughter and Humor in Holocaust Education

This article tries to defend the position that Holocaust Education can be enriched by appreciating laughter and humor as critical and transformative forces that not only challenge dominant discourses about the Holocaust and its representational limits, but also reclaim humanity, ethics, and difference from new angles and juxtapositions. Edgar Hilsenrath’s novel The Nazi and the Barber is discussed here as an example of literature that departs from representations of Holocaust as celebration of resilience and survival, portraying a world in which lies, hatred and violence are still perpetuated. Because of its transgressive qualities, Hilsenrath’s narrative of the Holocaust as a satire with elements of black comedy can offer pedagogical openings for using laughter to interrupt normative constructions of the Holocaust as an unspeakable and sacred event that lies outside history, and thus beyond the capacities of human understanding. It is argued that laughter is an important modality for inviting deep thinking about the Holocaust, to move it from a transcendent phenomenon to an immanent event, situated clearly in the realm of human action and worthy of understanding so as to prevent it from happening again.     

The Role of Group Experiences in the Healing Process of Massive Childhood Holocaust Trauma

This paper proposes that Holocaust child survivors profoundly benefit from participating in a variety of group modalities. From participant observation and interviews we demonstrate that affiliation in organizations, social events, commemorations, rituals, and particular therapeutic groups each contributes to the well-being of Holocaust child survivors. Mourning is enhanced by joining forces with others from a historical event that left many children orphans, bereft of a home, a community, a country, and an identity. Group participants achieve individuation and ego integration, and gain clarity about the complex psychological consequences of surviving the Holocaust. A fragmented identity is restored through the opportunity of interacting with others whose identity has been ruptured by similar cataclysmic events.Senior Research Fellow, Graduate Center of CUNY. Codirector, Psychotherapy with Generations of the Holocaust and Related Traumas, Training Institute for Mental Health. Codirector, Child Development ResearchSenior Member and Faculty, National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis. Codirector, Child Development Research     

The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview

The Nazi Holocaust has had continuing and widely reverberating consequences not only for the Jewish survivors but for the world at large. These consequences are detailed, first through a personal account of an Auschwitz survivor, and then through a discussion of the adaptive measures of concentration camp inmates and the long-term psychiatric and psychological effects on survivors and their families. The Survivor or Concentration Camp Syndrome and its relationship to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is described. Indirect effects of the Holocaust have been manifested in various ways, particularly through various levels of psychologic denial displayed by Holocaust criminals and (at least during the early postwar period) by the German public. The Holocaust has had profound effects on the ways the Jewish people regard themselves and are seen by others. Finally, the Holocaust can be seen as offering a kind of paradigmatic signature to the worldview of the end of the 20th century, emphasizing the persistence of evil and the limitations of the idea of progress.     

Growing Up and Living with Neurofibromatosis1 (NF1): A British Bangladeshi Case-study

In this article, I analyse a narrative by Rohima(1), a Bangladeshi woman now living in the UK who was diagnosed in adulthood as having NF1 (neurofibromatosis). While some themes in her narrative account resemble those of persons with NF1 in the general European and American population, other themes relate specifically to Bangladeshi cultural issues and practices. These particularly concern gender, sexual identity and marriage. As a young woman, Rohima's dark skin coloration and the tumors or lumps associated with her condition led her parents and relatives to regard her as unmarriageable and in effect, despite her evident intelligence and competence, to deny that she was a woman. Bangladeshi men and women alike found her appearance a bar to any social acceptability. Even after her marriage (to a non-Bangladeshi man), her family have been unwilling to accept her and her children fully into their kinship network. The article explores the consequences of genetic disorders such as NF1 in cultures where social identity and concepts of personhood, particularly for women, are inextricably related to appearance and to judgements regarding marriageability.     

Holocaust and resistance

This article deals with the following themes: (1) Nazi malevolence in selecting Jewish holidays as dates for some of their most barbarous action; (2) U.S. official observance of the Holocaust; (3) the irresponsible use of the term Holocaust and its precise use; (4) because of extermination of two-thirds of the Jews of Europe, the world Jewish population in 1979 is still 4 million less than in 1933; (5) are we “all guilty?” (6) are we “all Survivors?” (7) were we “all at Auschwitz?” (8) demystification of the Holocaust as a comprehensible event in twentieth-century history; (9) why “never to forgive?” and (10) the quality and extent of resistance.     

A Quantitative Case Study of Longitudinal Changes in Identity, Intimacy, and Generativity

A quantitative case study of one woman's development was conducted in order to explore psychosocial change in early adulthood. A contentanalytic coding system for identity, intimacy, and generativity themes derived from E. H. Erikson's writing was applied to letters and diaries of the British writer Vera Brittain written when she was 20 to 21 and 30 to 31 years old. Over time, Brittain used more intimacy and generativity themes and fewer identity themes. Even though Brittain used fewer total identity themes in her writing in her early 30s, her use of one identity subcategory—occupational role—increased in frequency, and the way in which she expressed her identity concerns indicated greater certainty about her identity.     

“ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS AN S.S. OFFICER”: THE HOLOCAUST BETWEEN HISTORY AND FICTION IN ELSA MORANTE'S LA STORIA

The twentieth-century Italian Jewish novelist Elsa Morante's La Storia, published in 1974, is rarely included in the canon of Holocaust literature today, yet contains considerable content regarding the Italian experience of the Holocaust. In this essay I examine how Morante's proclaimed artistic principles, in particular her notion of “verità poetica”, “poetic truth”, and “storia”, “history” or “story”, affect her depiction of the Holocaust. I also trace what I term an “anxiety of absence” in La Storia, which I believe explains not only Morante's use of characters who are unreliable witnesses to the Holocaust as it unfolds in Rome, but also explains her ultimate swerve away from her artistic ideals and her problematic use of historical sources.     

African American and European American Perceptions of Problematic Issues in Interethnic Communication Effectiveness

African American and European American perceptions of interethnic communication effectiveness were compared. Interethnic communication was conceptualized as a problematic event (perceptually organized into communication issues). Hypotheses proposed that ethnic identity would predict conversational issues which, in turn, would predict satisfaction. Nine issues salient to communication were derived from previous research: powerlessness, stereotyping, acceptance, goal attainment, authenticity, understanding, expressiveness, shared worldview, relational solidarity, and relaxation. The hypotheses were tested for differences between African Americans and European Americans with additional tests far relationship closeness. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the factorial validity of the issues and indicated that identity had both political and social dimensions for African Americans but only a single dimension for European Americans. Path analysis did not support the causal ordering. However, when the causal link between identity and issues was eliminated and satisfaction was regressed on the entire set of predictor variables the multiple Rs were above .91 for both ethnic groups. Different issues were associated with satisfaction for each group and for close and distant relationships for each ethnic group.     

MY FATHER,MYSELF

This essay presents material from the second analysis of an offspring of two Holocaust survivors, each of whom lost a child during the war. The first analysis (Kogan 2003 ) focused primarily on the patient's relationship with her mother. This second analysis revolves around the elaboration of the complex and painful father–daughter relationship, centering on the events surrounding the death of the patient's father. The discussion includes an exploration of the father's deferred action on account of his Holocaust trauma, which he passed on to the next generation; the break in the idealized paternal representation; and the daughter's identification with her father's disavowed aggressive aspects. It also examines some of the unique transference and countertransference problems that arose, mainly because patient and analyst belonged to the same traumatized large group.     

Psychological Groups and Political Psychology: A Response to Huddy's "Critical Examination of Social Identity Theory"

In a recent article in this journal, Leonie Huddy (2001) asks whether the social identity approach developed by Tajfel, Turner, and their collaborators can "advance the study of identity within political science" (p. 128). She concludes that "various shortcomings and omissions in its research program" (p. 128) hinder the application of the approach to political phenomena. This paper presents a response to Huddy's evaluation of the social identity approach. Several aspects of her account of social identity work are challenged, especially her suggestion that it ignores subjective aspects of group membership. The interpretation of the minimal group paradigm is discussed in detail, as are issues of identity choice, salience, and variations in identity strength. The treatment of groups as process in social identity theory and self–categorization theory is given particular emphasis.     

Hermanas de Corazón y Alma

Friendship is a relationship that can traverse generations or be located within a specific era of a person's life. In this article, the author examines the role that her childhood friendship played in shaping her understanding of gender, ethnicity, poverty, immigration, spirituality and family processes. This friendship was during emerging adolescence and helped the author navigate and develop mestiza consciousness. These lessons were reinforced during her graduate training and have influenced her identity as a Chicana feminist therapist and the manner in which she connects with clients in psychotherapy. After presenting the story of her friendship, the author incorporates the theoretical perspectives of Chicana Feminism and Spirita to demonstrate how this friendship has influenced her clinical work with women. Specific themes discussed are language, invisibility, and cultural formulations of gender and spirituality.