On silence and the holocaust: A contribution to clinical theory

Healing the wounds of our fathers: intergenerational trauma, memory, symbolization and narrative

This paper explores the history of psychoanalytical approaches to intergenerational trauma, both from the Freudian and from the Jungian schools, and addresses the need when we speak of intergenerational or transmitted trauma to better define the nature and the different categories of trauma with particular reference to extreme and cumulative traumas such as those experienced by the survivors of the Nazi death camps and the Russian gulags. Therapy with survivors and with their children requires a particular adaptation of analytical technique as what is at stake is not so much the analysis of the here and now of the transference and countertransference dynamics which indeed can in the early stages be counterproductive, but the capacity of the analyst to accept the reality of the trauma with all its devastating and mind-shattering emotions without losing the capacity to imagine and to play metaphorically with images, essential if the patient is to be able to create a space for representation.

Ageing Jewish Holocaust survivors: anxieties in dealing with health professionals

Jewish Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Australia after World War II are ageing and having more frequent contact with health services. Health professionals often lack the knowledge, training, skill or personal assurance to deal with the effects of massive trauma. Increased awareness of and sensitivity to older Holocaust survivors can lessen their anxieties and, potentially, improve treatment outcome. Such experience may form a useful lesson for health professionals in dealing with refugees from other atrocities as they age.