IT IS GENERALLY KNOWN THAT AFTER HITLER'S REGIME CAME to an end, a long period of denial had to elapse before psychoanalysts were able to start investigating the psychic effects of the Holocaust. In the 1950s, usually as part of diagnostic investigations connected with restitution proceedings, analysts began to interview patients of the first generation, especially survivors of concentration camps. Therapeutic work with patients of the second generation started in the 1960s, and at first their treatment did not seem to differ greatly from that of other neurotic, borderline, or psychotic patients. This initial impression, however, arose from an unconscious withholding of empathy with regard to those aspects of the psychopathology related to the horrors of the parents' extreme traumatization. Only gradually, as analysts relaxed their defenses, were they able to perceive the unusual features presented by these patients.

I want to focus attention on a particular characteristic of ego functioning that repeatedly impressed me in my own clinical