Holocaust Survival Stories: Change Over Time

Those Holocaust survivors who have found it impossible to discuss their experiences often face a bleak old age (Krystal, 1990). Some of those who have reached an audience, however, have been changed by the experience of writing. This paper analyzes the differences between those writers whose stories remain static, like Jerzy Kosinski, and others like Elie Wiesel, Gerda Weissmann Klein, and Aharon Appelfeld, whose accounts have become more complex as they aged.     

Relational Couple Therapy with Post-Traumatic Survivors: Links Between Post-Traumatic Self and Contemporary Intimate Relationships

The present article describes a clinical case study of relational couple therapy with post-traumatic spouses. Survivors, who were infants and toddlers during the Holocaust, disclose tremendous difficulties in their intimate relationships. The early loss of parental figures, and cumulative traumatic experiences throughout survivors' lives in the post war era hampered their capacity for intimate partnership despite its ultimate necessity. Relational couple therapy creates an unfamiliar experiential space with the couple's bond. This experiential space enables each partner to change destructive emotional patterns within one's inner psychic reality as well as the couple's emotional system. In addition, the therapeutic triangle creates partial transformational boundaries between past traumas and the couple traumatic bonds.     

Clinically Significant Change After Cognitive Restructuring for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse

This study investigated the outcome of cognitive restructuring for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse in terms of clinically significant change. Twenty-six participants were assessed for depression, State anxiety, State anger, State guilt and self-esteem before and after 10 weekly sessions of group Rational-emotive behavior therapy, and at follow-up after 8 weeks. In contrast to a previous analysis of the data in terms of statistical significance, indicating significant improvements on all variables from pre- to posttreatment, an analysis based on clinically significant change showed a differentiated treatment effect. Cognitive restructuring was found to be highly effective in facilitating recovery on anxiety, depression and anger, but less effective for guilt and low self-esteem. Only 3 patients (11, 54%) recovered on all 5 variables, while 10 patients (38, 46%) showed recovery on at least 4 variables. Relationship to the perpetrator and pre-treatment irrational evaluative beliefs (measured by means of the Survey of Personal Beliefs) were found to be the best predictors of treatment outcome. A poor response to treatment was associated with the perpetrator being a close family member and with more Other-directed Shoulds, while recovery was associated with the perpetrator being a friend or stranger and with more Awfulizing, Self-directed Shoulds and negative Self-worth beliefs.     

When culture fails: coping with cultural trauma

The research into the phenomenon of cultural trauma is growing as the effects of historical transformations are recognized and analysed. The concept of cultural trauma and the analytic concept of the cultural complex is a suitable theoretical approach for this research. The Lithuanian experience of cultural trauma after the historical shifts indicates the importance of the interplay between societal and individual factors in coping with trauma. Academic psychotraumatological studies carried out at Vilnius University indicate a stronger traumatic experience by people who are survivors of direct political repression and even intergenerational transmission of trauma, but this group also seems to demonstrate an intergenerational transmission of resilience. Paradoxically, from a long‐term perspective, the victims of direct repression seem to have suffered less than the people who accommodated to the regime, and this applies also to their offspring. Analysis in terms of overcoming cultural trauma indicates that society is gradually integrating historic traumatic experiences, although a healthy cultural identity has not yet been restored.     

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.     

Psychological management intervention guidelines for rape survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): A brief exploratory systematic literature review

This exploratory systematic literature review aimed to characterise the current evidence on psychological management intervention guidelines for use with rape survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. For the data searches we accessed the following electronic databases: Google Scholar, Science Direct, EBSCOhost, and PsychInfo. We utilised search terms with variations of the following key words: psychological management guidelines of PTSD*, rape survivors*. Inclusion criteria were guidelines for rape survivors with PTSD that consider referral, treatment, and preventive and health promotion in an international setting. We excluded guidelines that did not address PTSD resulting from rape in an international setting. We employed a narrative synthesis data analysis approach to integrate the evidence from across studies. Findings suggest prevalent guidelines for rape survivors with PTSD focus on cognitive behavioural therapy and other psychological management interventions in highly specialised areas and Primary Health Care (PHC) settings in international countries, but not in other countries such as South Africa. Emerging guidelines are needed for PTSD psychological management interventions in rape care clinics situated in South Africa.     

Resilience in Holocaust Survivors: A Study of Defense Mechanisms in Holocaust Narratives

There is extensive literature examining the psychological adaptation of survivors after the Holocaust, including studies of Holocaust narratives (HN). As a measure of psychological adaptation, defense mechanisms (DM) have been studied in various clinical samples, however, to date, not in Holocaust narratives. Using a standardized observer-rated measure, we assessed DM in Holocaust versus pre/post Holocaust narratives (other narratives [ON]) in 20 in-depth survivor interviews. Regarding individual DM, isolation of affect and self-assertion were statistically more frequent in the HN than the ON. High adaptive (mature) level defenses were more frequent in the HNs than the ON. Furthermore, the overall defensive functioning (ODF) was higher in the HN than the ON, contradicting previous findings showing lower defensive functioning in life-threatening situations. Possible explanations include differences in the nature of trauma, the time elapsed between the trauma and the interview, and the specificity of the sample. A qualitative overview with several examples from the narratives are also presented.     

‘Querying’ the Limits of Queering Boys Through the Contested Discourses on Sexuality

Presentations of boy’s sexuality within man–boy sexual relationships have shifted considerably over the past three decades. We document this through analyzing three very different constituencies: ‘boylover’ (adult men sexually attracted to boys) activist movements, three research case studies, and male survivors of abuse. We examine the specific ways boy’s sexuality has been constructed within each of these positions, how these have changed over this period, and what insights all this can shed on wider social and cultural (re)conceptions on age, gender, and sexuality. Studying these diverse perspectives provides a series of contrasting assumptions and frameworks which will yield invaluable insights on wider transformations in the production of narratives on child and intergenerational sexualities. We hope to illuminate this through drawing out the complex interplays involving power dynamics and fluctuations in the epistemological hierarchy delineating boy’s sexuality (in terms of more normative and transgressive forms this may take). We conclude this critical engagement with a discussion of the likely impact any ‘queering’ of, or fractures in, age/generational boundaries might have for the future narrating of boy’s sexual stories within man–boy sexual relationships.

Holocaust Abuse

This essay reconsiders the category of “Holocaust denial” as the marked indicator of ethical transgression in Holocaust historiography within American civil religion. It maintains that the present category excludes and thereby enables other violations of responsible Holocaust historiography. To demonstrate the nature and gravity of such violations, the essay engages the widespread claim that Hajj Muhammad Amin al‐Husayni, the former mufti of Jerusalem, was an instigator, promoter, or “driving spirit” of the Nazi genocide against Jews, and the associated suggestions of wider Arab and Muslim complicity. The essay uncovers the history of the Husayni narrative in question, the dramatic circumstances in which it emerged, its role in the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, and its rediscovery and misuse within American popular and political circles over the past two decades. Such misuse, it concludes, corrodes Holocaust recognition within American civil religion and demonstrates the need for a revision of the socially accepted ethical boundary for responsible Holocaust historiography.     

Children in genocide: Extreme traumatization and the ‘affect propeller’1

The author bases this paper on extensive research concerning children in genocide with a starting point in the Holocaust and in the genocide in Rwanda 1994. She demonstrates indicators for psychological phenomena concerning the child survivors' affect regulating that appeared in life histories presented in videotaped in‐depth interviews. The psychological phenomena concern experiences of persecution and ways of coming to terms with recurring memory images and affects. The interviews that have been analysed in detail form a basis for an emerging conceptual model about trauma‐ and generational‐linking processes within each individual‐the ‘affect propeller’. An overall conclusion from this study is that past traumatic experiences are recovered not as memories in the usual sense of the word, but as affects invading the present. Accordingly, affects seem to tell the story of the past traumatic experiences.