Reflections on Countertransference in Psychoanalytic Work with Child Survivors of the Shoah

The trauma of the Holocaust—from now on I will use the Hebrew term Shoah—carries within itself a multitude of sudden and unthinkable losses. Exposure to death, violence, and dehumanization—combined with starvation, illness and fear—placed the individual in a situation that was impossible to assimilate and work through. Too much reflective introspection could invite ambivalence and vulnerability; to feel sorrow at such a time could endanger life. For a great number of persons involved directly and indirectly, it was imperative for survival that all fantasy, spontaneity, and individuality be stifled. Human beings faced the dark vacuum of terror, surrounded by fear, urine, feces, and butchered bodies filled with shame, degradation, and uncanniness.

The nightmarish experience was inscribed in a space and time so far removed from our customary capacities for symbolization that its effect is almost impossible to measure or reconstruct (Gampel, 1992c; Spero, 1992a). The external violence impinged upon heretofore unknown layers of the soul and the mind, evoking in most victims unfamiliar psychological phenomena that had never come to light. The system of torture in the Shaoh aimed at destroying the victim's faith and connection with Self and ideals, and often succeeded. Objectal space was erased. Ideology and values were eliminated. The risk of touching upon affect could be taken only in extreme circumstances. Mere physical survival became the essence of existence.

Children exposed to war and social violence inevitably suffer losses and a disruption to their normal development. The history of the past century is replete with various traumatizations of children during the course of war and social violence, usually as secondary victims to larger goals of the conflicting parties. However, Jewish children who lived through the Shoah were, no less than the adults, primary victims of a deliberate and organized attempt to extinguish an entire racial group to which they belonged.