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For many years, the Group for the Psychoanalytic Study of the Effects of the Holocaust on the Second Generation has been conducting an in-depth, case-oriented investigation of the analytic treatment of children of survivors. Their work, which has focused on three related questions—(1) Is there something unique about the personalities of
children of survivors? (2) Is there something different about the process of their treatment? (3) Is trauma related to the Holocaust experience of the parents transmitted to the children and, if so, how?—has stimulated analytic interest in this area, made significant contributions to our analytic understanding of the complexities involved in the diagnosis and treatment of children of survivors, and provided insights into the difficulties posed by the analyst's reactions to the horrors of the Holocaust. It has also held the potential of extending beyond the examination of the emotional consequences of massive social, physical, and psychic trauma to shed light on many unsettled issues of character formation. Among these have been problems of superego development, particularly in situations of disrupted or perversely distorted social and parental value systems; the effects of trauma on the development and preservation of parenting capacities; the impact of intense parental narcissistic involvement or prolonged or incomplete parental mourning on the emotional development of the child; and the transgenerational transmission and consequences of severe traumatic states.
Generations of the Holocaust attempts to broaden and continue these important clinical and theoretical studies. For those not already familiar with the historical background of the psychiatric and psychoanalytic research on Holocaust survivors and their children, this book provides a concise and informative introductory section ("Prelude"), an interesting review of the persecutory practices of the West German government in the application of its Indemnification Laws (