Echoes of Trauma and Shame in German Families

Echoes of Trauma and Shame in German Families
Author: Lina Jakob
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253048265

A study of the generation of Germans dealing with the psychological effects of the parents’ and grandparents’ experiences during and after World War II. How is it possible for people who were born in a time of relative peace and prosperity to suddenly discover war as a determining influence on their lives? For decades to speak openly of German suffering during World War II—to claim victimhood in a country that had victimized millions—was unthinkable. But in the past few years, growing numbers of Germans in their 40s and 50s calling themselves Kriegsenkel, or Grandchildren of the War, have begun to explore the fundamental impact of the war on their present lives and mental health. Their parents and grandparents experienced bombardment, death, forced displacement, and the shame of the Nazi war crimes. The Kriegsenkel feel their own psychological struggles—from depression, anxiety disorders, and burnout to broken marriages and career problems—are the direct consequences of unresolved war experiences passed down through their families. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and a broad range of scholarship, Lina Jakob considers how the Kriegsenkel movement emerged at the nexus between public and familial silences about World War II, and critically discusses how this new collective identity is constructed and addressed within the framework of psychology and Western therapeutic culture. “This complex story is engagingly told through highly readable life histories and analysis, and provides much to think about concerning the aftermath of traumatic histories.” —Francesca Merlan “Jakob brilliantly traces the transgenerational impact of World War II, and the trauma and shame of Germany’s dark past that still haunts individuals and scars families. A searing inquiry into the multilayered meanings of public rituals, social memories and emotional suffering of a generation—painfully struggling with the inheritance of war and loss. An outstanding achievement.” —Assa Doron

Echoes of Trauma and Shame in German Families

Echoes of Trauma and Shame in German Families
Author: Lina Jakob
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253048273

How is it possible for people who were born in a time of relative peace and prosperity to suddenly discover war as a determining influence on their lives? For decades to speak openly of German suffering during World War II—to claim victimhood in a country that had victimized millions—was unthinkable. But in the past few years, growing numbers of Germans in their 40s and 50s calling themselves Kriegsenkel, or Grandchildren of the War, have begun to explore the fundamental impact of the war on their present lives and mental health. Their parents and grandparents experienced bombardment, death, forced displacement, and the shame of the Nazi war crimes. The Kriegsenkel feel their own psychological struggles—from depression, anxiety disorders, and burnout to broken marriages and career problems—are the direct consequences of unresolved war experiences passed down through their families. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and a broad range of scholarship, Lina Jakob considers how the Kriegsenkel movement emerged at the nexus between public and familial silences about World War II, and critically discusses how this new collective identity is constructed and addressed within the framework of psychology and Western therapeutic culture.

The Power of Emotions

The Power of Emotions
Author: Ute Frevert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009376810

Emotions make history and have their own history. Exploring the emotional worlds of the German people, this book tells a very different story of the twentieth century. Ute Frevert reveals how emotions have shaped and influenced not only individuals but entire societies. Politicians use emotions, and institutions frame them, while social movements work with and through them. Ute Frevert's engaging analysis of twenty essential and powerful emotions – including anger, grief, hate, love, pride, shame and trust – explores how emotions coloured major events and developments from the German Empire to the Federal Republic until this very day. Emotions also have a history, illustrated by the changing forms, meanings and atmosphere of various emotions in twentieth-century Germany: for example, hate was a driving force behind National Socialism but is out of place in a democracy. Around 1900, people associated practices with love or nostalgia that do not resonate with us today. Showcasing why Germans were enthusiastic about the war in 1914 and proud of their national football team in 2006, this book highlights the historical power of emotions as much as their own historicity.

Ghosts in the Consulting Room

Ghosts in the Consulting Room
Author: Adrienne Harris
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2016-04-20
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317281101

Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Trauma in Psychoanalysis is the first of two volumes that delves into the overwhelming, often unmetabolizable feelings related to mourning. The book uses clinical examples of people living in a state of liminality or ongoing melancholia. The authors reflect on the challenges of learning to move forward and embrace life over time, while acknowledging, witnessing and working through the emotional scars of the past. Bringing together a collection of clinical and theoretical papers, Ghosts in the Consulting Room features accounts of the unpredictable effects of trauma that emerge within clinical work, often unexpectedly, in ways that surprise both patient and therapist. In the book, distinguished psychoanalysts examine how to work with a variety of ‘ghosts’, as they manifest in transference and countertransference, in work with children and adults, in institutional settings and even in the very founders and foundations of the field of psychoanalysis itself. They explore the dilemma of how to process loss when it is unspeakable and unknowable, often manifesting in silence or gaps in knowledge, and living in strange relations to time and space. This book will be of interest to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, as well as social workers, family therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. It will appeal to those specializing in bereavement and trauma and, on a broader level, to sociologists and historians interested in understanding means of coping with loss and grief on both an individual and larger scale basis.

Trauma, Resilience, and Empowerment

Trauma, Resilience, and Empowerment
Author: Jost Rebentisch
Publisher: Mabuse-Verlag
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2019-07-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3863215028

Traumas can be passed from one generation to the next - this is well known – and hardly any group is so affected by this phenomenon as the descendants of people persecuted by the Nazis. But just how does this transfer take place? What role do family traditions and continued social practices play? Does genetics have an impact? Furthermore, can the cycle be broken? The descendants of those persecuted by the Nazis can draw on unique resources and skills. They make significant contributions to political and social reckonings with the Nazi era and they work for the welfare of the survivors. Many are active in political education and advocate for an appropriate culture of remembrance. In a time of increasing right-wing populism, their views are indispensable. This publication was made possible with support from the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Refiguring Les Années Noires

Refiguring Les Années Noires
Author: Kathy Comfort
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2018-11-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498561616

Through a close reading of seven literary memoirs of the Nazi Occupation of France, Refiguring Les Années Noires: Literary Representations of the Nazi Occupation shows how the memory of the period has been shaped by political and social factors. An interdisciplinary study incorporating trauma theory, history, and folklore studies, this book examines representations of the Occupation by a diverse group of writers ranging from a female Resistance fighter to one of the first French Roma novelists. The methodological diversity of the volume brings to the fore each author’s unique perspective and demonstrates that their works are at once historically and artistically significant. Above all, this book gives voice to groups whose experiences in occupied France have largely been forgotten.

The German Trauma

The German Trauma
Author: Gitta Sereny
Publisher: ePenguin
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2001-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN:

As a schoolgirl, Gitta Sereny was captivated by the theatrical spectacle of a Nuremberg Rally. Later, when the Nazis marched into Vienna, the spell was quickly broken when she saw an eminent Jewish doctor forced to scrub the pavement by Nazi thugs. The war years forged Sereny's lifelong fascination with Hitler's Germany and the indelible mark it made on the twentieth century. In this book of experiences and reflections she threads fragments of her own life into her larger quest to understand what it is 'that leads human beings so often and so readily to embrace violence and amorality'.

Echoes of the Trauma

Echoes of the Trauma
Author: Hadas Wiseman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2008-08-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780521879477

This book discusses the echoes of the trauma that are traced in the relational narratives that the sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors tell about their experiences growing up in survivor families. An innovative combination of the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method with narrative-qualitative analysis revealed common themes and emotional patterns that are played out in the survivors' children's meaningful relationships, especially in those with their parents. The relational world of the second generation is understood in the context of an intergenerational communication style called "knowing-not knowing," in which there is a dialectical tension between knowing and not knowing the parental trauma. In the survivors' children's current parent-adolescent relationships with their own children (survivors' grandchildren), they aspire to correct the child-parent dynamics that they had experienced by trying to openly negotiate conflicts and to maintain close bonds. Clinicians treating descendents of other massive trauma would benefit from the insights offered into these complex intergenerational psychological processes.

The Body Keeps the Score

The Body Keeps the Score
Author: Bessel A. Van der Kolk
Publisher: Penguin Books
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2015-09-08
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0143127748

Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.

Reluctant Witnesses

Reluctant Witnesses
Author: Arlene Stein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-08-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0199381917

Americans now learn about the Holocaust in high school, watch films about it on television, and visit museums dedicated to preserving its memory. But for the first two decades following the end of World War II, discussion of the destruction of European Jewry was largely absent from American culture and the tragedy of the Holocaust was generally seen as irrelevant to non-Jewish Americans. Today, the Holocaust is widely recognized as a universal moral touchstone. In Reluctant Witnesses, sociologist Arlene Stein--herself the daughter of a Holocaust survivor--mixes memoir, history, and sociological analysis to tell the story of the rise of Holocaust consciousness in the United States from the perspective of survivors and their descendants. If survivors tended to see Holocaust storytelling as mainly a private affair, their children--who reached adulthood during the heyday of identity politics--reclaimed their hidden family histories and transformed them into public stories. Reluctant Witnesses documents how a group of people who had previously been unrecognized and misunderstood managed to find its voice. It tells this story in relation to the changing status of trauma and victimhood in American culture. At a time when a sense of Holocaust fatigue seems to be setting in and when the remaining survivors are at the end of their lives, it affirms that confronting traumatic memories and catastrophic histories can help us make our world mean something beyond ourselves.