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In this slim but densely argued and documented exploration of intersections of historiography and psychoanalytic thought since World War II, the distinguished historian of the Holocaust, Dan Stone, presents a double reflection. How did the work of historians influence the evolution of psychoanalytic theories of psychic trauma and how have they modified initial approaches to explaining survival in the camps? Despite the different methods of the two disciplines, one fact and evidence-based, the other conceptual and abstract, Stone sees them as necessary companions in addressing the continuing questions raised by the crimes of the Nazi regime and their impact on inmates of the camps.
The story began with the publication of two influential and controversial interpretations of survival by Bruno Bettelheim (first article published in 1943) and Viktor Frankl . Bettelheim spent time in Dachau and Buchenwald, not extermination camps, before 1939; Frankl, on the other hand, spent almost three years in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Dachau, and Türkheim, although his still widely read book Man's Search for Meaning: From Death-Camp to Existentialism emphasized his brief time in Auschwitz. Frankl attributed survival to possessing rich inner resources that could prevail over external privation and abusive treatment. Bettelheim similarly spoke of his attempts to preserve a sense of autonomy, integrity, and personal freedom, but also applied Anna Freud's (and Ferenczi's) concept of identification with the aggressor (in children) to adult inmates. He was also clear that luck was a significant factor in survival. Probably their explanations of what they had witnessed in the camps fit with their previous optimistic
orientations to clinical work and contemporary existential ideas about the self, and both found defenders and harsh critics of their views. Today their ideas have been placed within larger contexts, if not widely discredited. As Stone documents, many psychoanalytically orien