Psychoanalysis Traumatized: The Legacy of the Holocaust

Abstract

Psychoanalysis is a survivor of the Holocaust. It was founded and flourished in central European centers that would be destroyed by the Nazis. A core group of refugees who lived through persecution and exile were instrumental in rebuilding their movement on alien shores. They had no opportunity to mourn the loss of their culture or their leader, Freud, whose death was overshadowed by the cataclysmic upheaval around them. Though its trauma has been dissociated, it is represented in psychoanalytic ideas and enacted in institutions within the context of delayed or incomplete mourning. For example, authoritarianism in psychoanalytic institutions will be explored as a reliving of the trauma of both fascism and exile, and not merely typical group psychology. Further evidence of the impact of dissociated trauma includes the astonishing scotoma for actual events in treatment of Holocaust survivors; the extreme privileging of infantile fantasy over reality, and attention to childhood neurosis at the expense of adult catastrophic events.

Vicarious Group Trauma among British Jews

“…It is well-documented in the psychology literature that transmitted trauma can elicit these traumatization symptoms in people who come into contact with trauma victims over a prolonged period of times, such as family members or therapists (McCann and Pearlman 1990); case studies have been written about the traumatization symptoms found in second and thirdgeneration offspring of Holocaust survivors (Danieli 1985;Prince 2009). My study adds to literature in this area as there is little research exploring secondary traumatization among Jews on the grouplevel, including Jews who have not been in close contact with trauma survivors.…”

“…The outcome has also been labelled secondary trauma by others such as Figley (1983). For example, there is evidence that children of Holocaust survivors (Danieli 1985;Prince 2009) and Vietnam combat veterans (Rosenheck and Nathan 1998) can experience social and psychological difficulties that are symptomatic of posttraumatic stress disorder. The psychiatric and psychology literature demonstrates on the individual level how the actual trauma can be transmitted to another person who has not lived through the traumatic experience themselves by analyzing the symptoms of traumatization that they display.…”

The Texture of Traumatic Attachment: Presence and Ghostly Absence in Transgenerational Transmission

“…Psychoanalysis has been altered in ways that have taken decades for us to begin to comprehend. Prince (2009) believes that, here in the United States, "psychoanalysis is a survivor of the Holocaust" (p. 179), and that many of our analytic ideas reveal a delayed or incomplete mourning. Also in this vein, Kuriloff (2010) wrote about the silence that ensued after postwar analysts-many of whom were Jews who had been subjected to great hardship-fled Europe and immigrated to the Americas.…”

The Self in Pain: The Paradox of Memory. The Paradox of Testimony

“…For example, one adolescent survivor, attending an American Yeshiva, quotes fellow students angrily denouncing him for his " bullshit " stories. Until the pioneering work of Kestenberg and Krystal ( Prince, 2009 ), psychoanalysts emphatically ignored and discouraged Holocaust material.…”