Trauma and Symbolization - My Mother, Myself

The author explores the traumatic impact of growing up as a replacement child to parents who were Holocaust survivors. Using a case study in which the patient was a replacement child for parents who each lost a child during the Holocaust, the author examines the damage to the child's ego functions (thinking abilities and reality testing) and emotional development. Analysis consisted of an attempt to understand the meaning of the parents' traumatization, to the parents as well as to the child, the way it shaped the parent-child relationship, and the impact it had upon the character structure of the child. The author then deals with some of the transference and countertransference problems encountered in the analysis, and particularly with the unique countertransference problems resulting from the special situation created by patient and analyst belonging to the same traumatised large group. The patient showed great resistance to getting in touch with feelings of shame and guilt connected to her aggressive wishes that she unconsciously linked to the atrocities of the past. The therapist colluded with the patient in the attempt to avoid threatening feelings, which in both their minds were connected to Holocaust imagery. Only by working through her feelings could the therapist realise that her apprehension was permeating the therapeutic relationship and hindering the patient's progress. She could then dis-identify herself from the Jewish-victim and Nazi-perpetrator images and recover her analytic function. As a result of the analytic experience, the patient's perception of reality and sense of psychic sanity were strengthened and her obsessive symptoms were transformed into creative activity.