From Concretism to Metaphor

The inability to mourn and nationalism in Japan after 1945

Failure to deal with the issue of collective and social loss increases the risk of extreme nationalism. When taken too far, a repetition of manic defence can arise that manifests itself in the form of war. In this paper, the notion of the "inability to mourn" by the German Psychoanalysts A. and M. Mitshcerlich (1967) is discussed in relation to the problem of Japan's post World War II nationalism, and its silence on social matters. The process of confronting past atrocities committed by the state is then discussed from the perspective of structural theory.

At the train station: the self, suspended in collective trauma. Symbolic analysis with victims of childhood trauma caused by state terrorism

This paper explores the consequences of a collective trauma on the individual psyche. The author aims to show the difficulties emerging in the process of working through an early trauma when the personal wound is merged with a family and cultural trauma. Referencing clinical dream material, the author also highlights the importance of including the objective and the subjective levels of analysis, because if the clinical work is solely focused upon the intrapsychic subjective dimension, this may tend to perpetuate the traumatic cycle based on the original denial. This process requires from the analyst sensitivity and receptivity to accept the reality of the collective trauma with all its overwhelming affects, without losing the capacity for imagination; thus, the horror of the non-representable may gradually find - within the analytic dyad - a symbolic way to be retrieved, metabolized, and elaborated.

"PLAYING WITH REALITY" IN A NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP

This paper explores the function of play under traumatic circumstances, focusing on playing with the reality of a Nazi concentration camp. The goal of playing was to enhance life forces, which was achieved by active mastery of the passive trauma, re-establishment of inner equilibrium, transformation of internal reality into a more bearable one, recovery of symbolic functioning. The analysis of the movie "Life is Beautiful" is used for illustrating this theme.

The impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the analyses of Holocaust survivors' offspring

This essay tackles the following issues: (a) The encounter of Holocaust survivor offspring whose damaged parents suffered from unresolved grief with a life‐threatening pandemic; (b) Changes of technique that may be needed during this period; and (c) The impact of countertransference of the analyst in the analytic cure in a shared life‐threatening situation. This theme will be examined by means of a case study, in which the life‐threatening situation of the pandemic reactivated guilt feelings. These feelings belonged to the patient's relationship with her mother, as well as to the Holocaust survivor mother, who committed suicide as a result of her unresolved mourning.

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

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.

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 ) 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.

‘Girls are to be seen, not to be heard’: Understanding the Social Trauma of Kutchi Girls in Post-earthquake Gujarat

The focus on children in the context of everyday life under vulnerable conditions offers great promise for enriching our understanding of how disputations over culture and forms of belongingness are enacted repeatedly and undramatically: here culture takes a living form rather than a fixed one. The proposed paper is part of a larger project that examines psychological and social trauma of child survivors of the 2001–02 Gujarat earthquake and riots. Interactions with Kutchi girls from villages of Lodai, Khengarpur, Khavda and outskirts of Bhuj enabled the researcher to explore the diverse ways in which gender structures the notions of childhood, household work and domesticity defines their identity, ‘inhibition’, ‘absence’ and ‘invisibility’ of a certain kind were emblematic of their personalities. Keeping these thematics in mind, a critical commentary, Child Attachment Interviews (CAIs) narratives, with girl-survivors of the 2001 Gujarat earthquake is offered. Attachment ( anaclisis, in Greek, meaning dependence/leaning on; in Freudian oeuvre often linked with the problematic of need versus drives) is understood as a basic human survival need, embedded within a dialectical intra-psychic/inter-subjective matrix that pervades culture and socialisation. Girls’ impoverished responses during the interviews were marked by long pauses, absent glances, occasional smiles; with mainly monosyllables spoken about their own self though maintaining adultomorphic views of work, their duties and family’s expectations. Each interview was more or less a carbon copy of the other. At one level the interviews try to tap into the nature of ties between child and their families, on another level these act as testimonies where differentiating narrative modes of thought from narrative discourse (Bruner, 2004) allowing an exploration into the psychic vicissitudes of this language of absence and everyday existence marked by painful endurance. The paper develops these observations further to argue that trauma in the case of these girls is a continual disenfranchisement of their voices, needs and desires. Attachment trauma in these young girls is this inability and failure of their families to adequately nurture (psychological and social) capabilities (Robeyns, 2003; Sen, 1982) in the (girl) child and this ‘lack’/trauma has an intergenerational transmission and import (Grubich-Simitis, 1984; Felman & Laub, 1992). The paper illuminates the symptom these girls have become (being mute, stoic [multiple/ongoing] trauma survivors) and behind this symptom lies social depravities such as gender discrimination and child-rights violation where the mother (and remaining family) is not only implicated but caught in the same rigmarole—of patriarchal hubris.

Bearing the unbearable: ancestral transmission through dreams and moving metaphors in the analtyic field

This paper explores how untold and unresolved intergenerational trauma may be transmitted through unconscious channels of communication, manifesting in the dreams of descendants. Unwitting carriers for that which was too horrific for their ancestors to bear, descendants may enter analysis through an unconscious need to uncover past secrets, piece together ancestral histories before the keys to comprehending their terrible inheritance die with their forebears. They seek the relational containment of the analytic relationship to provide psychological conditions to bear the unbearable, know the unknowable, speak the unspeakable and redeem the unredeemable. In the case of 'Rachael', initial dreams gave rise to what Hobson (1984) called 'moving metaphors of self' in the analytic field. Dream imagery, projective and introjective processes in the transference-countertransference dynamics gradually revealed an unknown ancestral history. I clarify the back and forth process from dream to waking dream thoughts to moving metaphors and differentiate the moving metaphor from a living symbol. I argue that the containment of the analytic relationship nested within the security of the analytic space is a necessary precondition for such healing processes to occur.

The Poverty in Psychoanalysis: ‘Poverty’ of Psychoanalysis?

The article reviews psychoanalytic scholarship on the themes of poverty and deprivation available on the Psychoanalytic Electronic Publications (PEP-web). The article evaluates select definitions and explanations of poverty as illustrated in the scientific papers published in the PEP-web from 1933 to 2003 (covering 70 years) and finds that psychoanalytic scholarship has very little to say about poverty or the poor. In spite of references to the poverty of dreams, poverty of affect, poverty of intellect, there is in reality little engagement with ‘real’ poverty. The reasons and effects of this neglect are firstly traced to the attitudinal biases and beliefs held by the psychoanalytic authors which prevents them from acknowledging poor and deprived as worthy of their attention. The review also points out to great confusions, oversimplifications and neglect shown in the use of poverty and related terminologies. Absence of fuller appreciation of poverty is then traced to some philosophical quandaries in psychoanalytic epistemology such as the place of real versus psychic, culture versus individual and need versus value to cite a few. A third reason for this neglect may be attributed to the uneven spread, reception and development of psychoanalysis in different geopolit-zical locations, and the neglect in addressing these cultural differences could be behind these social inequalities remaining unaddressed in the literature.

Childhood trauma in obsessive compulsive disorder: the roles of alexithymia and attachment

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to investigate the interrelationships between childhood trauma, attachment, alexithymia, and the severity of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in a cohort of participants with OCD.

RATIONALE

There is a growing body of research linking traumatic experiences in childhood with the development of OCD. The mechanisms involved in this association are not yet clear.

METHODS

The sample was comprised of 82 people with OCD and 92 comparison participants. A cross-sectional design was used, utilizing internet-mediated administration of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire - revised (CTQ-R); the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale - Self-Report (Y-BOCS-SR); the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR); and Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Partial least squares (PLS) analysis was used to determine significant paths between the constructs.

RESULTS

Results of PLS analysis supported all of the hypotheses made: there was a significant positive correlation between childhood trauma and attachment avoidance, which in turn was significantly positively associated with alexithymia. Alexithymia was significantly associated with the severity of OCD symptoms and the number of OCD symptoms. Mediational analysis showed that alexithymia significantly carried an influence from attachment avoidance to the severity of obsessions and the number of obsession symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a relationship between childhood trauma and OCD, however this relationship is not direct in nature but is influenced by peoples' past experiences with significant others and associated difficulties in emotional processing.

Healing the wounds of our fathers: intergenerational trauma, memory, symbolization and narrative

This paper explores the history of psychoanalytical approaches to intergenerational trauma, both from the Freudian and from the Jungian schools, and addresses the need when we speak of intergenerational or transmitted trauma to better define the nature and the different categories of trauma with particular reference to extreme and cumulative traumas such as those experienced by the survivors of the Nazi death camps and the Russian gulags. Therapy with survivors and with their children requires a particular adaptation of analytical technique as what is at stake is not so much the analysis of the here and now of the transference and countertransference dynamics which indeed can in the early stages be counterproductive, but the capacity of the analyst to accept the reality of the trauma with all its devastating and mind-shattering emotions without losing the capacity to imagine and to play metaphorically with images, essential if the patient is to be able to create a space for representation.

Ladies in waiting: a group intervention for families coping with deployed soldiers

It is widely recognized that military service during wartime can take a toll on a soldier's psychological health. Recent work has revealed effects on the families left behind as well, as reflected, for example, in an increase in child abuse and neglect in these families. My interest in studying the transgenerational transmission of trauma led me to offer the National Guard a pro bono group therapy for women whose husbands had been deployed overseas. A slightly unorthodox approach paved the way not only to group treatment but, ultimately, individual treatment for these women and their children. My hope is that this work can serve as a model for other therapists who share my interest in treating the intergenerational transmission of trauma by implementing group and mother-child psychotherapy.

Reality testing in place of interpretation: a phase in psychoanalytic work with descendants of Holocaust survivors

Repetition of experience endured by the first generation has frequently been observed in descendants of Holocaust survivors. Such repetitions are associated with an erosion of the ability, in the area of the trauma, to distinguish more or less reliably between external and internal reality. This in turn results from the defensive need, in the affected families, to dissociate from such extreme traumatic experiences. Clinical material is presented to show that, at a certain phase in psychoanalytic work with patients belonging to subsequent generations, interpretive activity may need to be temporarily suspended in order to facilitate reality testing and the recognition of the Shoah as an objective historical fact.

Hysteria and mourning--a psychosomatic case

Freud early in the history of analysis viewed hysteria in relation to trauma. This became a subject of great interest to Ferenczi particularly in his clinical activities in trying to find the balance between fantasy and trauma. The enactment in the body, as a psychosomatic symptom, is a way of unconsciously drawing attention to that which cannot be processed emotionally. A young man with a long-standing obsessional character had a sudden onset of motor disturbance. A recent set of family calamities triggered a psychosomatic defence against his having to be affectively in touch with a breakdown, which first occurred when he was 2 years old, and which he had never mourned. It was only after the development of a severe body tic following the family disruption that the possibility of finding lost affect and the capacity for an integration of the psychic and somatic became available through the analytic process.

The role of the analyst in the analytic cure during times of chronic crises

The role of the analyst in psychoanalytic treatment during periods of chronic crises is illustrated with material from two case studies. The first clinical vignette shows an analyst able to stay with fears evoked in the patient by the traumatic external reality, even as the analyst tried to explore with the patient an inner universe that handled this reality in unique ways. The second case study focuses on how the analyst's countertransference during this period of chronic crises, which she was experiencing along with the patient, made it difficult for her to contain the patient's fears and anxieties, because of the threat to her own existence, as well as to her identity as an analyst. In this second case the analyst, out of denial of the external situation, focused blindly on the patient's internal reality in order to counteract her own sense of passivity and helplessness in the confrontation with death and destruction. She clung to "classical" analysis by trying to analyze the patient's defenses, work them through, etc., thus making so-called analytic interpretations rather than staying with the patient's fear, as well as her own, and helping the patient more directly. A turning point came with the birth of the analyst's granddaughter; fear for the new arrival's safety made the analyst sharply aware that it is impossible to ignore external reality, that it must be given a place both in everyday life and in analysis. This awareness enabled the analyst to contain the patients' fears, which helped him feel more supported and facilitated change.

Action knowledge, acknowledgment, and interpretive action in work with Holocaust survivors

Survivors withhold disclosure of suffering when their terror is unwitnessed and when their expectation of disbelief or disregard obfuscates the reality of persecution. Knowledge itself then becomes traumatized, losing the power to inform and mobilize action. Survivors become habituated to suffering in a manner that subverts meaning, dampens vitality as well as pain, and arrests empathic connectedness. The dearth of transferential cues in such depleted existences leaves analysts in doubt as to whether they have been unintrusive or unavailable to these patients. Restoring survivors' sense of being witnessed requires interpretive actions that acknowledge the suffering that survivors have lost the will and means to make known or even represent. Such interventions draw on analysts' own projective identifications and use of the self, counterposing the will to live against the resignation to unwitnessed terror.

The place of annihilation anxieties in psychoanalytic theory

Survival-related clinical reports are abundantly found in the works of classical, object-relational, and self psychological writers, but are underrepresented in major theoretical formulations on anxiety. Fears of being overwhelmed, merged, penetrated, fragmented, and destroyed, as contents of unconscious and conscious fantasies, are regularly interrelated with the typical dangers. Fifteen preliminary propositions invite closer study of such apprehensions and provide definitional components. Annihilation anxieties are triggered by survival threat; are found early but can be engendered throughout the life cycle; constitute a basic danger; are residuals of psychic trauma; have specifiable subdimensions; may occur in presymbolic form or be associated with fantasies in conflict/compromise formation; may arise with or without anticipation; may be accompanied by controlled or uncontrolled anxiety; are motives for defense; and may be associated with particularly recalcitrant resistances. The study of annihilation anxieties in relation to the basic danger series has both theoretical and clinical advantages, especially for understanding traumatic, anxiety, phobic, psychosomatic, addictive, narcissistic, borderline, and psychotic manifestations, as well as sexual problems (including perversions), nightmares, dissociative and panic states, and especially difficult resistances.

"Enactment" in the lives and treatment of Holocaust survivors' offspring

This paper explores an aspect of "enactment" often seen in Holocaust survivors' offspring: the compulsion to re-create their parents' experiences in their own lives through concrete acts. At the core of this compulsion is a psychic hole, a gap in the child's emotional understanding, stemming from identification with the parents on one hand, and the parents' denial or repression of the trauma on the other. The compulsion to enact can be transformed into a cognitive mode when such offspring are helped to find the meaning of the trauma in their parents' lives, as is illustrated here by clinical examples.

At the sources of the symbolization process. The psychoanalyst as an observer of early trauma

This paper presents a psychoanalytic study of mothers and infants, concentrating on very early traumatization and its impact on the symbolization process. This can be traced in the analysis in the destruction of freedom of association and the symbolization process, leading to petrifications, somatizations, or acting out. A theory of the origin of the symbolization process is developed by observing the kinesthesia of traumatized infants. This approach, based on years of observation, offers a perspective on the landscape before representation, before the object has become represented. The theory takes account of forces from the area of the unconscious as described in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (Freud, 1920). A new view of the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the mind emerges from this study. The author tries to demonstrate that the mind is multi-dimensional and that our theory of the mind therefore needs the complexity of UCS/PRC/CS. If psychoanalytic theorizing is to remain faithful to the forms and movements of the associative mind, it should not be simplified into linear causalities, as it would be if we were concerned only with object representations.

The transgenerational transmission of holocaust trauma. Lessons learned from the analysis of an adolescent with obsessive-compulsive disorder

This paper outlines an attachment-theory based model of transgenerational trauma inspired by the successful psychoanalytic treatment of a severely disturbed adolescent with obsessive-compulsive disorder who was the first child of the first daughter of a holocaust survivor. It is proposed that the transmission of specific traumatic ideas across generations may be mediated by a vulnerability to dissociative states established in the infant by frightened or frightening caregiving, which, in its turn, is trauma-related. Disorganized attachment behaviour in infancy may indicate an absence of self-organization, or a dissociative core self. This leaves the child susceptible to the internalization of sets of trauma-related ideation from the attachment figure, which remain unintegrated in the self-structure and cannot be reflected on or thought about. The disturbing effect of these ideas may be relatively easily addressed by a psychotherapeutic treatment approach that emphasizes the importance of mentalization and the role of playful engagement with feelings and beliefs rather than a classical insight-oriented, interpretive approach.

Traumatic memory and the intergenerational transmission of Holocaust narratives

This paper investigates the roles of affect regulation, narrative cohesion, and symbolic representation in the intergenerational transmission of the Holocaust experience. A study of the reminiscences of mothers who are Holocaust survivors and their daughters' reflections about the Holocaust illustrates the process of the transmission of trauma by tracing the transgenerational evolution of narrative forms, dynamic themes, and affective organization. The quality of the survivor parent's organization and integration of affect has significant bearing on how her child assimilates her knowledge of the Holocaust and develops the capacity to tolerate and express painful emotions. Through the preservation, transformation, and transmutation of traumatic memory, children of survivors strive to assimilate, redeem, and transform their tragic historical legacy.