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A Wolf in the Attic: The Legacy of a Hidden Child of the Holocaust chronicles Dr. Sophia Richman's early life as a hidden child who survived the Holocaust disguised as a Christian during the Nazi occupation of Poland. This autobiography immediately engages the reader by blending historical details with a self-analysis that offers considerable authenticity. Its juxtaposition of universal themes of dislocation with the intensely personal nature of trauma begins in the first chapter when Richman reports, “I am a survivor of the Holocaust…” in concert with revealing a repetitive dream:
I have to catch a plane or boat to some distant destination. I haven't allowed myself enough time to pack all my stuff. I desperately gather my clothes and things. Time slips away. I'm racing against the clock. (Richman, 2002, p. xiii).
Richman memorializes thirty-five members of her extended family who were killed in the Holocaust, in an account that conveys her own emotional growth as a woman, as a psychoanalyst, and as an increasingly vocal witness to the horror of the Nazi brutality.
For psychoanalysts, trauma constitutes a central organizing principle that underlies character formation. The residue of childhood trauma unifies psychic experience through its influence on character traits and patterns of internal object relations. This memoir's overall organization duplicates crucial elements of psychological recovery from trauma. The chapters recount the creation of a cohesive history of Richman's life. They record her gradual uncovering of anxiety-laden memories, and they document her processing of traumatic feelings that arose at points of maturational conflicts.
Richman notes that, for decades, undecipherable anxieties reoccurred whenever she had to struggle with either life transitions or personal setbacks. She reports the disquieting details of her abusive first marriage which seemed an exacerbation of her difficulties and lack of