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The psychoanalytic literature contains many descriptions of the development of an individual's sense of identity (Erikson, 1959; Freud, 1923; Jacobson, 1964; Kernberg, 1966; Schafer, 1968; Person and Ovesey, 1983). The work of Margaret Mahler describes it as a complicated and difficult process in which the girl must “disidentify herself from part-object representations of her mother” (Mahler, 1981, p. 637). Mortimer Ostow (1977) has stressed the importance of identification as a person prepares for and copes with separation from parents. He also describes identifying with a fantasy of trauma as a way a person can reinforce his commitment to those being left and as a way the person gains a sense of potency and optimism that he can survive and separate. For individuals who have had traumatic life experiences resulting in conflicts, fantasies are generated which express the conflicts and their characterological defenses (Krystal, 1968). As Maria Bergmann (Bergmann and Jucovy, 1982, p. 288) states, “The Holocaust experience is a paradigm for the study of universal phenomena related to trauma.”
Second generation patients of those who really experienced the Holocaust have been described (Bergmann and Jucovy, 1982) as having a distinct need to live in the parents' past and to change that past to victory over the aggressors. For these people, issues of survival are a part of most developmental phases and ultimately affect psychic structure. Content of psychotherapy with them is similar to central themes of the parents, centering around how the parent survived and focusing on specific experiences of the parents.