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This British psychoanalyst's account of what has taken place in the clinical, analytic space is most vivid. She tells us that she lost the notes on the four cases on which she reports, and therefore what she offers is truly a narrative. Her contemporaneous presentation of historical facts and feelings makes this a convincing piece of work. Pines points to the uniformity of findings on the "second generation" of concentration camp survivors. Their lives have been directed by their Shoah-traumatized parents. They became "replacements" for lost persons, as well as for lost self-esteem. The "second generation," used as "selfobjects," adapted themselves at the high cost of their own identities. This was necessary in order to keep the victim-parents intact enough to function as nursing and protective parents. However, such self-sacrifice caused them unconscious rage at the deprivation suffered. Accompanying sadomasochistic fantasies had to be kept secret. Once a trusting alliance has been established in analysis, all this gets poured upon the head of the analyst. Pines underlines how draining this may become to the therapist, who may be seen as a "Nazi torturer," or may be treated like vermin, as had been the victim-parent.
Pines confesses openly to the pain of countertransference. She suspects that the wish to avoid knowing about one's own sadomasochistic potentialities has caused many of her contemporaries, the second generation of refugees—as well as many of the analyst-refugees themselves—to stay away from treating patients of the "second generation." British attitudes—"one doesn't talk openly of one's sufferings and grief"—encourage such avoidance. The secretiveness of the victims of the Shoah, transmitted to their children, makes analytic treatment very difficult. But in Israel,