You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It is always a special event when someone (an analyst) tells a highly personal story which reminds us of something. In order for the tale to have weight, it must link the
personal psyche with a collective need for remembering as ritual. This article has that weight, and strikes a reflective chord within the mind of the reader.
It is a story based in the author's childhood in Nazi Germany and begins with her standing in front of her headmistress saying, ‘No, I do not want to join the Jungmädel’ (Hitler's youth movement). As she had an American father, this option was open to her, but, nevertheless, taking it threw her into a conflict of tremendous proportions which was not to be resolved until well into her middle years.
The decision to stand outside triggered a split in her which she explores in her paper through dreams and selected details of her personal history. She manages to inform and highlight the collective and personal elements that each of us experiences in the struggle with evil, touching on both personal and collective guilt and also the personal shadow. She tries to come to terms with the cultural near-marriage ‘between the Jews and the Germans brought about in the last two centuries, and the effect of the repression of this contact that Nazism had on the German psyche’. The author reminds us of what Jung said about collective guilt: ‘it hits everybody who was anywhere near the place where the terrible thing happened’.
When confronted with such a story, it can be hard to continue to value the minutiae that create ordinary guilt. These can pale into insignificance unless we remain open to the tiny resonances within our own daily experiences, thereby acknowledging our personal portion of the collective problem.