Sense of Coherence During Female Holocaust Survivors’ Formative Years

Four female Holocaust survivors were interviewed in order to investigate how they coped prior to the Holocaust, during the Holocaust years, following the end of World War II, and during integration within emerging Jewish society prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. Antonovsky’s (1987 Antonovsky, A. (1987). Unraveling the mystery of health: How people manage stress and stay well. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. [Google Scholar]) concept of sense of coherence (SOC) and thematic analysis were employed. The analysis suggests that their ability to navigate these life-changing circumstances as young women was the result of the elasticity of the SOC components and the meanings ascribed to them, depending on the situations encountered.     

Counsellors’ and psychologists’ experience of working with male survivors of sexual trauma: a pilot study

A qualitative study was undertaken to enhance awareness of the therapeutic needs of the male survivor of sexual trauma through exploration of counsellors’ and psychologists’ experience of working with this client group. The participants were 32 counsellors and psychologists who work for an NHS Trust department. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyse the data which was gathered by means of a postal questionnaire. Six categories emerged from the analysis that highlighted prevalent experience. These were: (a) that the therapist's gender was important, (b) professional concerns, (c) the importance of the relationship, (d) transference/counter transference, (e) that male and female abusive experiences are the same and (f) attention to client's presenting problems. The main conclusions derived from these results and implications for practice are considered.     

Being in Berlin: A large group experience in the Berlin Congress

In July 2007, the International Psychoanalytic Congress convened for the first time since the war in the former Nazi capital, Berlin. An open large group forum was held at this meeting, where attendees (Jewish, German and others) had the opportunity to explore the emotional aspects stirred up by being in Berlin. Hundreds of people participated in the event and described it as the 'heart of the Congress'. We examine several aspects of the event, including the passions stirred, the containment of the setting, and the voices present and absent.     

Displacement as trauma and trauma as displacement in the experience of refugees

This paper investigates the relations between displacement, home, trauma and the self in the experience of refugees, which has become an issue of unexpected and far-reaching proportions in recent times. It questions to what extent and under what conditions displacement in the world may be traumatic and how trauma may be considered the effect of an inner displacement. Refugees’ lives are marked by forced migration that is related to a certain suffering due to the changes in their family, relational, social and cultural lives. The paper explores the extent to which these changes can represent a break so significant as to be traumatic. It outlines the way in which traumatic experiences can produce an inner displacement and reorganization of one’s mental life that leads to a focus on traumatic complexes. Under the most severe traumatic conditions, this can be understood as a displacement of the central axis of Self, in which the ego complex yields its position to other complexes, with a deep change in the organization and functioning of self. The experience of refugees highlights the way in which we live in a matrix of conscious and unconscious links between inner and outer worlds that need deeper and simultaneous consideration to understand their implications and mutual resonances for the psyche. Clinical cases of refugees will illustrate some aspects of these interconnections.     

The Logic of The Goldhagen Debate

Since Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaustattempts to show that the Holocaust is explicable and can be understood largely in terms of a single cause, “eliminationist anti-Semitism”, it is not surprising that the book has generated an international debate. What is surprising is the magnitude and emotional intensity of the debate. This article argues that the deepest flaws in it Hitler's Willing Executioners,as well as the chasm of disagreement between Goldhagen's detractors and defenders, have as much to do with reasoning and concepts as with matters of fact. It concludes that Goldhagen's central argument is stronger than many of his critics claim, but that the inadequacy of his cognitive interpretation of anti-Semitism and his unexamined psychological assumptions weaken his attempt to explain the Holocaust. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Negative emotionality and relationships with God among religious Jewish Holocaust survivors

For those who believe in God, tragedy and misfortune often raise internal emotional and religious dissonance. Regardless of one's theological stance, emotional reactions to the Holocaust can be expected to elicit negative feelings towards God, resembling the reactions one would experience towards parents or caretakers who perpetrate or facilitate aggression. Coining the term “theistic object relations” to reflect the maturity level of relationship with God, it is posited that it is predicated on a safe and nurturing environment – paralleling the maturational development of healthy interpersonal interactions. In this context, survivors’ reactions are elaborated using the lens of parental abuse and neglect. Individual beliefs about God's role, while affecting the options for cognitive rationalisations among victims, are posited to have only minimal relevance to the expected negative emotionality. Variations in such reactions are explored from a psychoanalytic perspective within the intersectional context of trauma, divine providence, object relations development, and defence mechanism theory. Unresolved questions about the developmental hallmarks of theistic object relations are outlined insofar as they are relevant to our population.     

Survivors of Torture: Realities, Responsible Care, and Rehabilitation

This paper provides an overview of special issues and challenges for the psychiatrist providing care to a survivor of government sponsored torture. Case examples illustrate cultural concerns, issues of confidentiality, transference, dual loyalties, and provider responsibilities. The author hopes to stimulate interest in others to learn more about working with this challenging and rewarding group of patients.     

Redeeming the lost voice of the ancestors

The Holocaust of the Jews in World War II involved not only the murder of 6 million Jews but also the traumatic destruction and wipe-out of whole communities, with their rich culture and tradition which had existed for centuries. In places where no one survived, it was almost impossible to reconstruct the collective memory of those communities. The voice of the ancestors was lost. As a daughter of Holocaust survivors, I have always felt the strong presence of the loss, not only of the murdered family members but also of the ancient colourful world of Eastern European Jews. I have always felt compelled to link back to that lost world. In the past three years, my journey to the pre-war past has become more intense. This article describes the double role of my journey: it is both an attempt to reconstruct, redeem and preserve the memory of the lost ancestors, and a personal journey to the echoes of my ancestors' voices within my soul.     

“You Should Know Better”: Expressions of Empathy and Disregard Among Victims of Massive Social Trauma

There is a belief that victims of extreme violence should be sensitive to the suffering of others although most of the psychosocial literature points to the opposite. We examine this belief by looking at work that we have carried out on the psychosocial effects of the Holocaust and on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We assert that being a victim of collective violence often inhibits empathy toward others and creates continued animosity. We focus on intergenerational aspects connected to victimization and their negative impact on the expression of empathy among descendants of victims in order to explain why the sense of victimhood and justification of repeated violence is often expressed by individuals born years after the original violence took place.