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“I lived in a wall for a long time A wall I built unknowingly. It protected me from others' indifference And protected me from baring sensitivities carved Deep within the inner reaches of my soul.”
—From A Child Survivor of the Holocaust Comes out of Hiding by Eva Metzger Brown, PhD, ABPP
It is an extraordinary opportunity to listen to the conversation of four psychoanalysts reflecting on their memories as hidden children during the Holocaust. I consider this group to be particularly well qualified to help us understand the mystery of the emotional survival of children who survived multiple dislocations and loss of family at a very young age. When the war ended in 1945, three of the panelists were under eight years old, and Sophia Richman only four years old. However, liberation did not mean the resumption of ordinary life; the post-war years were filled with uncertainties and further dislocations. I consider the panelists' survival and the lives they live today a mystery because they appear to contradict many assumptions of psychoanalytic developmental theory; specifically, about the far-reaching consequences of traumatic experiences at a young age. The development of some of the most severe personality disorders are supposed to be associated with the kind of dislocations, disruptions and terror that every one of the panelists experienced at the most vulnerable times in their lives. But what I saw on the tape of the roundtable discussion were four