On Silence and the Holocaust: A Contribution to Clinical Theory

I am concerned in this paper with the capacity of children of Holocaust survivors to tolerate affects and the construction, in collaboration with a therapist, of a narrative account of data from the remembered, fantasized, and hitherto unexplored past. I suggest that tolerance for certain affects which are Holocaust sequelae is enhanced by the commitment to historical explanation and that such a narrative commitment, when supported by a therapeutic holding environment, constitutes a facilitative element of the treatment process.

I also examine a particular aspect of how trauma is perpetuated from one generation to the next. Several clinicians have examined this issue. Auerhahn and Prelinger (1983) cite the principle of repetition, in which the parent induces a re-creation of Holocaust images, fantasies, and experiences in his child in order to work through conflicts relating to meaninglessness and self-fragmentation originating in the death camps. The child, in turn, promotes the re-created images, fantasies, and experiences in order to make sense out of a turbulent parental biography shrouded in pain and ambiguity. Wilson and Fromm (1982) describe the way the survivor parent may use his child as a “restitutive self-object,” in which the child may simultaneously represent both a recapitulation of searing dissociated memories as well as the symbol for the parent to undo