The official theme of the 34th International Psychoanalytical Congress, held in Hamburg, Germany from July 28 through August 2, 1985 was “Identification and its Vicissitudes,” and this theme was explored through plenary sessions, special discussion groups, workshops, and individual papers which focused on issues of identification in different forms of pathology—neurosis, psychosis, perversions, and character pathology—as well as in childhood and adolescence. In addition, there were numerous individual clinical and theoretical papers which related directly or indirectly to these themes. Over fifteen hundred analysts, primarily from Europe (c. 50%), North America (c. 30%), and South America (c. 10%) attended the Congress, participating in a rich intellectual and social program.
But for most who went to Germany and for the German participants themselves, the more important and more controversial aspects of the Congress revolved around the awareness that this was the first IPA Congress to be held in Germany since the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Most were aware of the controversies surrounding the decision to meet in Germany. There were many who for personal or ideological reasons felt they could not go. Of those who went, some returned for the first time to a land associated with painful memories and tragic losses. Others made a first visit to a land whose history impacted in countless ways, directly or
indirectly, on family and friends. No one who attended could remain untouched by the painful realization of the human potential for violence which was unleased during the Nazi period in Germany. This theme ran as a current throughout the Congress, either formally as part of the official program or informally in countless more personal exchanges between German and non-German, Jewish and non-Jewish, older and younger generation analysts.
The issue was addressed directly by all speakers at the Opening Ceremony on Sunday, July 28. Klaus v. Dohnanyi, Mayor of Hamburg, welcomed the congress participants, acknowledging the German recognition of the fact that for many the decision to come was a difficult one. He said, “You have come to Germany at a time in which our attention and conscience have come to focus again more sharply on those years of German history. The question: ‘What were things really like at that time?’ and ‘How could it happen?’ are being raised more emphatically and answered more honestly than in the decades immediately following the war …. Therefore, I welcome your decision to come to Hamburg, and this in a special way. Not because I see it as a kind of demonstrative handshake; that would be greatly overemphasizing the role of the site chosen for a congress. But rather because I know that we are all joined in a common endeavor to understand man and his history, and because I hope that you will be able to assist and guide us with the humanism of your scientific tools and resources.”
He went on to say that for many years Germans were not able to face the truth of what had happened or to explore how it could have happened at all. He cited Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich's book On the Inability to Mourn (1967) as a significant turning point in that it focused attention on the need for Germans to face the truth in order to free themselves from a psychological and emotional prison. He referred to the efforts of the psychoanalytic organizations in Western Germany recently to expose and explore the most difficult questions. He said, “We are inclined to think that it was a German predisposition that opened the way for National Socialism and the Holocaust. This must be true, for there have been—and unfortunately still are—many instances of fascism and fascist regimes, but there has been only one organized Holocaust, and that was in Germany. At the same time I am also convinced that such relatively simple references to the authoritarian personality and family structure in Germany, the harsh discipline in German schools or the German's submissive attitude vis-a-vis authority are not enough to ever come close to comprehending an Auschwitz. I am at a loss for an answer concerning the reasons behind it, the German reasons …. We Germans are no doubt a people in trouble,
fearful of being left behind, of not being loved, or not being recognized. It can hardly be a coincidence that German was the native language of the three great innovative figures Marx, Freud, and Einstein. But then it is also no coincidence that they were all driven out by us, and that they found the English language liberating. Whoever says ‘our Bach’ and ‘our Beethoven’ must also say ‘our Hitler.’ This too will be one of your themes here.”
This address was followed by the opening remarks of Dr. Limentani, President of the IPA, who reminded the congress of the long period of debate before the decision was reached to hold the 34th Congress in Germany and he said he hoped one goal of the congress would be to help the German analytic colleagues recuperate and heal through remembering and understanding rather than rationalization and forgetting.
In his welcoming address, Dieter Ohlmeier, President of the DPV (the German Psychoanalytic Association), stressed the importance in psychoanalysis of absolute honesty and freedom of thought. He spoke about the struggles many German analysts have had in reconciling these values with the personal pain and horror that is experienced in acknowledging their country's, their parents', and their own historical past. He said of himself and his colleagues, “We are …. in deep pain, fully aware of events caused by Germans.” He reminded the Congress that only that which can be raised to conscious level, that which can be remembered, can be
worked through. He said that the inability to mourn has blocked the creative freedom of many German analysts; only recently have they struggled on a collective group level to acknowledge feelings of guilt, shame, and sorrow. German analysts have felt disconnected from their colleagues throughout the world and faced the prospect of this congress with considerable anxiety but genuine hope that the attempt at dialogue on an international level would serve as a beginning effort at collaborative work toward understanding.
In her opening remarks, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Chairwoman of the Program Committee, also spoke directly to this theme. She spoke in German, “in respect for the country whose language and culture are close to us all through our identification with Freud and the early pioneers.” She recalled the early development and flourishing of psychoanalysis in Germany and she said, “In faith to Freud, we should not encourage oblivion, repression, and denial…. We need to speak of the past.” She stressed that it was to the credit of the German analysts that they agreed to an open discussion of the issues and had prepared an exhibition covering the history of psychoanalysis in Germany with documents chosen out of respect for the truth, a testimony in itself to their courage. Dr. Chasseguet-Smirgel reminded the congress that many had overcome painful feelings in their decision to come, feelings that might at any moment be reactivated during the congress. She concluded, “No one here is indifferent to past events in the land of Germany.”
Tuesday, July 30th, was officially set aside for discussion of the Holocaust. The plenary session focused on “Identification and its Vicissitudes in Relation to the Nazi Phenomena.” This was followed by twenty workshops conducted in different languages to allow for more personal interaction and more informal dialogue. There were three larger discussion groups with simultaneous translation on “The History of Psychoanalysis in Germany,” “Psychic Damage and Late
Sequelae of Victims and Perpetrators of Nazi Phenomena,” and “The Effects of the Holocaust on Survivors and their Children.” In addition, there were many individual scientific papers on related issues, including, for example, “Children who Survived the Holocaust,” “Working with Women Survivors of the Holocaust: Affective Experiences in Transference and Countertransference,” “The Replacement Child: An Instance of Being Someone Else,” and “Identification and Splitting Processes Referring to Nazi Ideology in a Borderline Case.”
The tone of the workshops varied considerably. Some focused on the formal presentations in the plenary session and remained on the level of clinical illustrations and discussion of defense mechanisms, psychodynamics, and transference and countertransference problems in work with survivors, Nazis, and the children of both. Others were far more personal. For example, in one a dialogue developed between two analysts who had experienced the concentration camps, one as a more protected camp physician, the other as an ordinary inmate. Gradually this dialogue expanded to include the silent, listening younger German colleagues. This group struggled with the question of how it could have happened, of how whole populations of people did not resist. The discussion in this group began with informal translations into English for those who did not speak German but before long the emotions which were stirred, the memories being shared, the painful efforts being made to communicate the nearly incommunicable left no room (or need) for translation.
In his Letter to the Editor (Newsletter, Winter, 1985) in response to Leo Rangell's article, “German Psychoanalysis: The Moral Issue” (Newsletter, Fall, 1984), Stanley Olinick expressed his concern that when the two generations (the survivors and their children) have expired, the “catastrophes of Naziism, the War, and the Holocaust will have been relegated to the history books and their possible redeeming object lesson to humanity will have been forgotten.” Without open dialogue and collaborative efforts at understanding, this could well happen. At the IPA Congress there was a genuine attempt on an international level to begin this important work.
Perhaps it is too difficult for many of the first generation to speak openly and personally about their experiences. In fact, it has been the second generation of analysts in Germany who have most persistently demanded an end to silence and an open discussion of the years during and following the Third Reich. It was the younger generation who pressed for this theme at the last three German speaking Middle European analytic conferences. And Mortimer Ostow in his Point of View article “Psychoanalysis in Germany” (Newsletter, Winter, 1985) mentioned that when he was asked to speak on anti-semitism at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, he noted that the audience consisted mainly of young analysts.
At the IPSO Pre-Congress, attended by one hundred fifty candidates and recent graduates from twenty-two different countries, the need to communicate and the struggle to understand were clear. IPSO (The International Psychoanalytic Studies Organization) was founded in 1969 with the support of IPA and currently has one thousand members throughout the world. In his opening remarks at the 8th IPSO Pre-Congress in Hamburg, Dieter Ohlmeier, President of the DPV, said, “You, dear colleagues, are the hope for the future of psychoanalysis. I ask you to be most candid and most truthful about these problems. It will help to defend psychoanalysis against dehumanization in the future.”
Although the official theme of the IPSO Pre-Congress was “The Process of Identity Formation in Psychoanalytic Training” and most of the papers related specifically to this, the unofficial theme here, as at the IPA Congress later that week, was open inquiry into the Nazi period with the hope that this would lead toward increased reconciliation of German and non-German analysts. An opening paper on psychoanalytic training in Western Germany and a paper session on “Psychoanalytic Identity and Fascism” dealt directly with these themes. Some German candidates
were frank and open in sharing with international colleagues the personal and professional struggles they have experienced as part of their inheritance as the second generation in the country of National Socialism and the Holocaust. And some candidates from other countries openly shared the personal tragedies which made it difficult for them to go to Germany. A candidate from Brazil told during a lunch discussion of how his German Jewish father never spoke of his German past and had prohibited German to be spoken at home. Before his return to Germany for the conference, he had thought of himself as Jewish, but emotionally denied his German heritage or the fact that his father's family had lived and died in Germany. Gradually over the week-end where small discussion groups and planned social events allowed friendships to develop and trust to grow, Germans and non-Germans were able to share some of the more personal and difficult feelings associated with this year's congress.
Because a discussion on Sunday morning of the paper “The Repressed Identification with Attitudes of Parents who Accepted National Socialism in Analysis and Analytic Training” was cut short due to time, IPSO invited interested participants to continue more informally on Tuesday evening. A room for approximately twenty was reserved. Over seventy candidates and recent graduates arrived, overcrowding a small, hot room, eager to begin a dialogue on the issues. Among the questions which kept emerging were: How did it happen? How can we prevent it from happening again? What about those years of silence? What would we as analysts do in a similar situation today? And more difficult issues were approached, although emotional responses tended to be too strong for adequate dialogue: What was it about the German psyche (in addition to the social-political-economic reasons) which made Germans the perpetrators of the Holocaust? What can be changed to prevent this happening in Germany again? What was it about the Jewish psyche (in addition to the social-political-economic issues) which resulted in their being chosen as the primary victims? What can be changed to prevent this happening somewhere again?
The tone for these discussions had been set by the President of the German Association and two German candidates who at the Opening Session spoke candidly about the conflicts being experienced by German candidates today. Many have intensely ambivalent feelings toward their teachers and analysts whose perceived failures during the Third Reich prevent their use as objects of idealization and identification. The shame and guilt which are felt collectively are experienced individually in their analyses. Fearing idealization of the older generation they are, perhaps, as a group more critical, more fearful of authority, and more sensitive to the possible abuse of power by supervisors and teachers. They expressed concern that a fear of idealization had for many interferred with their love and enthusiasm for their analytic work and analysis itself. They wished to “rejoin the living history of the analytic movement despite the break produced by the Third Reich.”
Among the younger German analysts who attended and talked, the search for a personal and professional identity and the need to come to terms with their national history were interrelated, conflicted, and intense. This generation is not driven to forget; they are struggling to learn as much as they can, asking hard questions of themselves, their parents, and their teachers. If it could happen to their parents, their teachers, their analysts, what would prevent it from happening to them? As analysts, aware of the power of unconscious identifications, they are fearful but determined to expose their own unconscious fantasies, projections, and projective identifications.
They fear their analysts will be resistant to doing this work with them. They need to ask and they need to know.
Yet many remained silent at the open discussions, afraid to mention their confusions and their conflicts, to express their sorrow at their own personal losses because of the guilt they feel in relation to the horrors of the concentration camps. Some of these Germans say they feel deeply ashamed to be German. One candidate told how on a visit to Poland she spoke in French to avoid being identified as a German. And it was only after one candidate organized a workshop where the anticipatory anxieties related to the fears of being attacked by non-German colleagues were openly discussed and examined did an Organizing Committee emerge at all to plan and execute the IPSO Pre-Congress.
On the second generation level, dialogues were started, friendships were made, addresses were exchanged. A Canadian Jewish candidate whose mother had suffered during the war stayed on after the congress to visit with a new German analyst friend in his home. Perhaps what was felt by many was summed up most succinctly by a Norwegian candidate whose father was interned in a concentration camp because of his involvement in the Resistance during the war. Addressing the congress from the floor during the plenary session, he said, “I came to Germany as a colleague and I hope to leave as a friend.”
For many the 34th IPA Congress in Hamburg was unsettling. A few stories were snared publicly; more were offered on a personal level; most were not told at all. As one analyst there said, “It was a restrained beginning.” But it was a beginning, and an important one, nevertheless.