Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony

Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony PDF Author: Dori Laub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317510046
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Psychoanalytic work with socially traumatised patients is an increasingly popular vocation, but remains extremely demanding and little covered in the literature. In Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony, a range of contributors draw upon their own clinical work, and on research findings from work with seriously disturbed Holocaust survivors, to illuminate how best to conduct clinical work with such patients in order to maximise the chances of a positive outcome, and to reflect transferred trauma for the clinician. Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony closely examines the phenomenology of destruction inherent in the discourse of extreme traumatization, focusing on a particular case study: the recording of video testimonies from a group of extremely traumatized, chronically hospitalized Holocaust survivors in psychiatric institutions in Israel. This case study demonstrates how society reacts to unwanted memories, in media, history, and psychoanalysis – but it also shows how psychotherapists and researchers try to approach the buried memories of the survivors, through being receptive to shattered life narratives. Questions of bearing witness, testimony, the role of denial, and the impact of traumatic narrative on society and subsequent generations are explored. A central thread of this book is the unconscious countertransference resistance to the trauma discourse, which manifests itself in arenas that are widely apart, such as genocide denial, the "disappearance" of the hospitalized Holocaust survivors and of their life stories, mishearing their testimonies and ultimately refusing them the diagnosis of "traumatic psychosis". Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony provides an essential, multidisciplinary guide to working psychoanalytically with severely traumatised patients. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and trauma studies therapists.

Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony

Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony PDF Author: Dori Laub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317510046
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book

Book Description
Psychoanalytic work with socially traumatised patients is an increasingly popular vocation, but remains extremely demanding and little covered in the literature. In Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony, a range of contributors draw upon their own clinical work, and on research findings from work with seriously disturbed Holocaust survivors, to illuminate how best to conduct clinical work with such patients in order to maximise the chances of a positive outcome, and to reflect transferred trauma for the clinician. Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony closely examines the phenomenology of destruction inherent in the discourse of extreme traumatization, focusing on a particular case study: the recording of video testimonies from a group of extremely traumatized, chronically hospitalized Holocaust survivors in psychiatric institutions in Israel. This case study demonstrates how society reacts to unwanted memories, in media, history, and psychoanalysis – but it also shows how psychotherapists and researchers try to approach the buried memories of the survivors, through being receptive to shattered life narratives. Questions of bearing witness, testimony, the role of denial, and the impact of traumatic narrative on society and subsequent generations are explored. A central thread of this book is the unconscious countertransference resistance to the trauma discourse, which manifests itself in arenas that are widely apart, such as genocide denial, the "disappearance" of the hospitalized Holocaust survivors and of their life stories, mishearing their testimonies and ultimately refusing them the diagnosis of "traumatic psychosis". Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony provides an essential, multidisciplinary guide to working psychoanalytically with severely traumatised patients. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and trauma studies therapists.

Testimony

Testimony PDF Author: Shoshana Felman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135206031
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
In this unique collection, Yale literary critic Shoshana Felman and psychoanalyst Dori Laub examine the nature and function of memory and the act of witnessing, both in their general relation to the acts of writing and reading, and in their particular relation to the Holocaust. Moving from the literary to the visual, from the artistic to the autobiographical, and from the psychoanalytic to the historical, the book defines for the first time the trauma of the Holocaust as a radical crisis of witnessing "the unprecedented historical occurrence of...an event eliminating its own witness." Through the alternation of a literary and clinical perspective, the authors focus on the henceforth modified relation between knowledge and event, literature and evidence, speech and survival, witnessing and ethics.

The Power of Witnessing

The Power of Witnessing PDF Author: Nancy R. Goodman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415879027
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
First Published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Bearing Witness to the Witness

Bearing Witness to the Witness PDF Author: Dana Amir
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135137947X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Bearing Witness to the Witness examines the different methods of testimony given by trauma victims and the ways in which these can enrich or undermine the ability of the reader to witness them. Years of listening to both direct and indirect testimonies on trauma has lead Dana Amir to identify four modes of witnessing trauma: the "metaphoric mode", the "metonymic mode," the "excessive mode" and the "Muselmann mode." In doing so, the author demonstrates the importance of testimony in understanding the nature of trauma, and therefore how to respond to trauma more adequately in a clinical psychoanalytic setting. To follow these four modes of interaction with the traumatic memory, the various chapters of the book present a close reading of three genres of traumatic witnessing: literary accounts by Holocaust survivors, memoirs (located between autobiographic recollection and fiction) and "raw" testimonies taken from Holocaust survivors. Since every traumatic testimonial narrative contains a combination of all four modes with various shifts between them, it is of crucial importance to identify the singular combination of modes that characterizes each traumatic narrative, focusing on the specific areas within which a shift occurs from one mode to another. Such a focus is extremely important, as illustrated and analyzed throughout this book, to the rehabilitation of the psychic metabolic system which conditions the digestion of traumatic materials, allowing a metaphoric working through of traumatic zones that were so far only accessible to repetition and evacuation. Bearing Witness to the Witness will appeal to trauma researchers of all research areas, including psychologists, psychoanalysts, literary scholars as well as philosophers of language and philosophers of the mind. The book will also be of interest and relevance to clinical psychologists, psychoanalytic candidates and graduate students in literary theory and criticism.

Witnessing Witnessing

Witnessing Witnessing PDF Author: Thomas Trezise
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823264041
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Witnessing Witnessing focuses critical attention on those who receive the testimony of Holocaust survivors. Questioning the notion that traumatic experience is intrinsically unspeakable and that the Holocaust thus lies in a quasi-sacred realm beyond history, the book asks whether much current theory does not have the effect of silencing the voices of real historical victims. It thereby challenges widely accepted theoretical views about the representation of trauma in general and the Holocaust in particular as set forth by Giorgio Agamben, Cathy Caruth, Berel Lang, and Dori Laub. It also reconsiders, in the work of Theodor Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, reflections on ethics and aesthetics after Auschwitz as these pertain to the reception of testimony. Referring at length to videotaped testimony and to texts by Charlotte Delbo, Primo Levi, and Jorge Semprun, the book aims to make these voices heard. In doing so, it clarifies the problems that anyone receiving testimony may encounter and emphasizes the degree to which listening to survivors depends on listening to ourselves and to one another. Witnessing Witnessing seeks to show how, in the situation of address in which Holocaust survivors call upon us, we discover our own tacit assumptions about the nature of community and the very manner in which we practice it.

The Handbook of Psychoanalytic Holocaust Studies

The Handbook of Psychoanalytic Holocaust Studies PDF Author: Ira Brenner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000021211
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
This book is a unique compilation of essays about the genocidal persecution fuelling the Nazi regime in World War II. Written by world-renowned experts in the field, it confronts a vitally important and exceedingly difficult topic with sensitivity, courage, and wisdom, furthering our understanding of the Holocaust/Shoah psychoanalytically, historically, and through the arts. Authors from four continents offer their perspectives, clinical experiences, findings, and personal narratives on such subjects as resilience, remembrance, giving testimony, aging, and mourning. There is an emphasis on the intergenerational transmission of trauma of both the victims and the perpetrators, with chapters looking at the question of "evil", comparative studies, prevention, and the misuse of the Holocaust. Those chapters relating to therapy address the specific issues of the survivors, including the second and third generation, through psychoanalysis as well as other modalities, whilst the section on creativity and the arts looks at film, theater, poetry, opera, and writing. The aftermath of the Holocaust demanded that psychoanalysis re-examine the importance of psychic trauma; those who first studied this darkest chapter in human history successfully challenged the long-held assumption that psychical reality was essentially the only reality to be considered. As a result, contemporary thought about trauma, dissociation, self psychology, and relational psychology were greatly influenced by these pioneers, whose ideas have evolved since then. This long-awaited text is the definitive update and elaboration of their original contributions.

Social Trauma – An Interdisciplinary Textbook

Social Trauma – An Interdisciplinary Textbook PDF Author: Andreas Hamburger
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030478173
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
This book explores the intersection of clinical and social aspects of traumatic experiences in postdictatorial and post-war societies, forced migration, and other circumstances of collective violence. Contributors outline conceptual approaches, treatment methods, and research strategies for understanding social traumatizations in a wider conceptual frame that includes both clinical psychology and psychiatry. Accrued from a seven year interdisciplinary and international dialogue, the book presents multiple scholarly and practical views from clinical psychology and psychiatry to social and cultural theory, developmental psychology, memory studies, law, research methodology, ethics, and education. Among the topics discussed: Theory of social trauma Psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic approaches to social trauma Memory studies Developmental psychology of social trauma Legal and ethical aspects Specific methodology and practice in social trauma research Social Trauma: An International Textbook fills a critical gap between clinical and social theories of trauma, offering a basis for university teaching as well as an overview for all who are involved in the modern issues of victims of social violence. It will be a useful reference for students, teachers, and researchers in psychology, medicine, education, and political science, as well as for therapists and mental health practitioners dealing with survivors of collective violence, persecution, torture and forced migration.

Representing the Holocaust

Representing the Holocaust PDF Author: Dominick LaCapra
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501705083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
"Representing the Holocaust is an impressive book that will have a significant impact on the way historians think about the Holocaust and the writing of history. LaCapra's precise and probing study explores the ways that the traumatic event inevitably disrupts the relationship between representation and memory. He writes from the deep conviction that whatever historians might believe, theory is indispensable for them. Indeed, his work best exemplifies the value of theory, setting a standard for historiographical reflection that is not easily matched."—Anson Rabinbach, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

Postmemory, Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Ghosts

Postmemory, Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Ghosts PDF Author: Rony Alfandary
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000411842
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Through the collection of letters sent by members of a Jewish family between 1923 and 1942, this fascinating book explores phenomenological and psychoanalytical aspects of the Holocaust and its associated trauma, and the impact on future generations of the same family. This book charts a postmemorial study of the Cohen family of Salonica which branched out to Paris and Tel-Aviv during the 1920s and 1930s. The exploration of the contents of four boxes containing hundreds of letters, pictures and other documents portray a microhistory of one family that was once a part of a thriving community. Showing how the shadows of trauma can be passed through the generations, the book uncovers the tragedies that befell the Cohen family, and how the discovery of these materials has affected existing family members. In an intriguing work of postmemory research and analysis, this book appeals to both scholars of the Holocaust and psychoanalysts interested in the unconscious impact of history.

The Belated Witness

The Belated Witness PDF Author: Michael G. Levine
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804755559
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The Belated Witness examines major works by Art Spiegelman, Cynthia Ozick, Christa Wolf, and Paul Celan, focusing specifically on the unsettling configuration of birth-as-death trauma around which these texts are organized.