The inter-generational transmission of trauma: The effects of abuse on the survivor's relationship with their children and on the children themselves

This paper explores some of the potential consequences of childhood abuse in adulthood, in terms of the effects on parenting, and on the child of the abuse survivor. Reference is made, and parallels drawn where appropriate, to the experiences of survivors of the Holocaust in respect of both these themes. the clinical experience of the author vis-à-vis survivors of abuse and parenting has strong similarities to some of the findings of those researching this subject from the perspective of the Holocaust. While the primary focus is on the experiences of survivors of childhood abuse these similarities and parallels are also acknowledged.     

Psychological Adjustment Among Adult Children of Alcoholics: A Cross-Cultural Study

In this study, we compared Hispanic and Caucasian college students identified as adult children of alcoholics in terms of psychological adjustment using the Diagnostic Inventory of Personality and Symptoms (DIPS; Vincent, 1985). Results of the study suggested that, among college students, Caucasian men seem to be at a greater risk for using alcohol and drugs than Caucasian women or Hispanic men and women.     

‘If I knew where the enemy,or even Germany was,we could have fired in that direction’: Bion's experience of war

The role of a child psychotherapist's gender is not often considered in terms of treatment outcome. This paper discusses how aspects of being a male child psychotherapist influenced the successful treatment of a very young boy with Asperger's Syndrome. The paper highlights how the nature of his very early relationship with his mother and the absence of his father were the basis of his difficulties resulting in that diagnosis. It shows that his desire to seize the opportunity of working with a male enabled him to understand his feelings about his father, why it was so difficult to want to be with him and not his mother, and why he could not be without her.

Le rôle joué par le sexe du psychothérapeute d'enfants dans les effets du traitement est rarement pris en compte. Dans cet article, l'auteur montre qu'à un certain niveau le fait d'être un psychothérapeute homme eut une influence sur la réussite de la thérapie d'un très jeune garçon présentant un syndrome d'Asperger. Selon l'auteur, la nature de la relation précoce entre ce petit garçon et sa mère, ainsi que l'absence de son père, étaient à l'origine des difficultés qui conduisirent à ce diagnostic. Il montre que le désir de l'enfant de se saisir de l'occasion ainsi offerte de travailler avec un homme lui permit de comprendre trois éléments essentiels : ses sentiments à l'égard de son père, la raison pour laquelle il lui était tellement difficile de vouloir être avec lui plutôt que de rester avec sa mère, et ce qui faisait qu'il ne pouvait pas se passer de celle-ci.

Die Rolle des Geschlechts des Kindertherapeuten wird nicht oft bezüglich des Behandlungsergebnis in Betracht bezogen. Dieser Artikel diskutiert, wie Aspekte dessen, ein männlicher Kindertherapeut zu sein, die erfolgreiche Behandlung eines sehr kleinen Jungen mit Asperger Syndrom beeinflussten. Der Artikel unterstreicht, wie die Art seiner frühen Beziehung zu seiner Mutter und die Abwesenheit seines Vaters die Grundlage seiner Schwierigkeiten bildeten, die zu dieser Diagnose führten. Es zeigt, dass sein Wunsch, die Gelegenheit zu ergreifen, mit einem Mann zu arbeiten, ihm ermöglichte, seine Gefühle seinem Vater gegenüber zu verstehen, warum es so schwierig war, mit ihm und nicht seiner Mutter sein zu wollen und warum er nicht ohne sie sein konnnte.

Riassunto: Il ruolo che gioca il sesso dello psicoterapeuta infantile non è solitamente considerato in relazione al risultato del trattamento. In questo articolo si discute come il fatto di avere un terapeuta maschile abbia influenzato per certi aspetti il risultato positivo del trattamento di un bambino molto piccolo che soffriva della Sindrome di Asperger. L'articolo illustra come la natura della sua primissima relazione con la madre e l'assenza del padre furono alla base delle sue difficoltà che portarono alla diagnosi. L'articolo mostra come il desiderio del bambino di lavorare con un terapeuta maschile gli ha permesso di capire i suoi sentimenti verso il padre, perché era così difficile voler restare con lui e lo stesso non succedeva con sua madre, e perché non poteva restare senza di lei.     

Holocaust survivors in long-term care

ABSTRACT

Little research exists on the experience of older trauma survivors in long-term care settings. This study examined the experience of Holocaust survivors in community-based and facility-based long-term care. We wished to know if Holocaust survivors had a systematically different experience in such settings compared to persons without a trauma experience in their backgrounds. Through interviews with survivors, American-born Jews in the same settings, family members, and professional staff, we learned that there were differences in certain aspects of mental health and emotional well-being and that these differences are associated with the relative lack of a network of family members as compared to American-born Jews.     

Jean Baker Miller,MD, Visionary Pragmatist

ABSTRACT

Jean Baker Miller’s 1976 book, Toward a New Psychology of Women, was an overnight success. It struck a deep chord in many women because it was based on listening to women’s stories. Instead of seeing women through the lens of male psychology with its emphasis on separation and autonomy, Jean suggested that relationships are central to women’s experience of themselves and the world. Traits that were typically pathologized (needing other people, attending to the messages of emotions, wanting to participate in growth fostering relationships for all involved) were revisited by Jean and her colleagues who discovered strengths where others had seen weakness. The resulting work is known as Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) and has offered new understandings of women’s and men’s development with a special emphasis on the impact of power and marginalization on personal and collective wellbeing. Jean’s work is carried forward by members of a collaborative group with whom Jean worked for many years. RCT theorists have written and edited over 20 books, 115 works in progress, and numerous chapters and articles that continue to elaborate on Jean’s groundbreaking work. RCT is applied to both clinical and social justice settings. Jean was devoted to contributing to the creation of a more just society.     

中西早期的“适度”思想及适用范围的扩展——从人间伦理到生态伦理

此文从中西“中道”和“中庸”的翻译和理解入手,进而讨论和比较了中西“中道”和“适度”思想的一些相近内涵和意义层面,主张把主要是作为人间伦理的“适度”观念引用到生态伦理之中,以建立人与自然的和谐关系。     

阶层流动的“双刃剑”效应及其心理机制

阶层流动是指人们在社会分层体系中相对位置的变化。人们普遍预期,向上流动促进个体发展和社会进步。然而近期研究也表明,向上流动还可能损害个体健康和主观幸福感,使人们低估和容忍社会不平等,并反对再分配。地位认同、贫富归因倾向以及系统公正信念能够解释向上流动的双刃剑效应。未来研究需要进一步澄清向上流动感知的具体表现,深入考察向上流动影响的心理机制,探索促进阶层流动积极效应发挥的干预方法。     

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     

When the Third is Dead: Memory,Mourning, and Witnessing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust1

The origins of psychoanalysis, as well as the concerns of our daily endeavors, center on engagement with the fate of the unbearable – be it wish, affect, or experience. In this paper, I explore psychological states and dynamics faced by survivors of genocide and their children in their struggle to sustain life in the midst of unremitting deadliness. Toward this continuous effort, I re‐examine Freud’s theoretical formulations concerning memory and mourning, elaborate André Green’s concept of the ‘Dead Mother’, and introduce more recent work on the concepts of the ‘third’ and ‘thirdness’. Throughout, my thoughts are informed by our clinical experience with the essential role of witnessing in sustaining life after massive trauma. I bring aspects of all these forms of knowing to reflections about a poem by Primo Levi entitled Unfinished business and to our own never finished business of avoiding denial while living in an age of genocide and under the aura of uncontained destructiveness.     

Theorizing Politics After Camus

Theorizing has been conceived historically in illuminative and ocular metaphors, and as an activity that occurs in a fixed and privileged relation to political society that permits a panoramic perspective. These elements of light, sight, and distance, are supportable existentially and ethically in post-war, post-Holocaust world. One of the first to explore the challenges to theorizing in this era was Albert Camus. He provided phenomenological and existential investigations of the obstacles to theorizing politics in his literary works, particularly his trilogy of novels: The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall. In this paper, I offer a reading of these novels that isolates theorizing as an activity performed not from a transcendent perceptual vantage of perfect light and vision, but from the immanent perspectives achieved in the city, among friends, or by exile.