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In 1929, Freud wrote in support of his view of human nature, homo lupus homini, “Anyone who calls to mind the atrocities committed during the racial migrations or the invasions of the Huns, or by the people known as Mongols under Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane, or at the capture of Jerusalem by the pious Crusaders, or even, indeed, the horrors of the recent World War—anyone who calls these things to mind will have to bow humbly before the truth of this view.” Today a schoolchild could easily augment Freud's list with even more horrendous examples drawn from the events of the last 65 years.
In this timely book, the authors examine the phenomenon of “large-group chosen trauma,” that is, the unconscious choice of a large group to incorporate a mental representation of shared traumatic experiences suffered at the hands of some other group. This ethnic, religious, national, or racial marker becomes part of the core identity of members of the large group. The authors of The Third Reich in the Unconscious discuss, in particular, the concept of trans-generational transmission, in which members of the traumatized generation unconsciously deposit aspects of themselves related to the trauma, i.e., representations, into the core identity of their children, who are thereby unconsciously charged with certain tasks that the traumatized generation has been unable to perform or complete. For example, the inability of the Holocaust survivor to mourn the loss of loved objects puts the onus on the survivor's children to bear this task as part of the development of his or her own self-representation. More generally, the authors refer to the unconscious fantasies in the next generation, “whose task it becomes to deal with the shame, rage, helplessness, entitlement, and guilt that the previous generation/s have been unable to work through for themselves” (p. 37).
The Holocaust, the campaign of genocide carried out against the Jews by the German state during the Second World War, provides much o