Abstract
Studies have shown that many children of Holocaust survivors suffer from the experiences of their traumatized parents. Indeed, many of these children call themselves second-generation survivors. Drawing on over 250 interviews with Holocaust survivors from the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University, as well as interviews with the children of survivors, this manuscript argues that the transmission of historical trauma from one generation to another is best explained in terms of how trauma disrupts the attachment system. Children want and need to experience their parents’ trauma. However, they need to do so in an age-appropriate way, and in a way that is adequately symbolized. To be excluded from their parents’ subjectivity is as damaging as being overwhelmed by unintegrated parental experience. Attachment theory turns out to be an especially good medium for making sense of this delicate balance.
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Notes
Trossman was criticized by Solkoff (1981, pp. 32–33) for his biased sample: young adults who came for help from the university’s counseling center. Solkoff is concerned that almost every psychoanalytic study of survivor’s children suffers from selection bias: only the most troubled children come for help. (In fact, we do not know whether this is true or not; many emotionally troubled people never seek professional help.) The proper conclusion, I believe, is not to see any of these studies as evidence that children of survivors are X per cent more likely to be troubled than other children, but that their troubles exhibit certain common characteristics.
There is also a new dissociative subtype, which may well fit some survivors. However, once again the diagnostic criteria remain the same.
References cited in this way, by first name plus T-, refer to testimonies in the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University. This method of citation is the preferred practice of the Archive. A summary of each testimony can be found on the Yale open catalog known as Orbis. There the abbreviation is HVT plus accession number.
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Fred Alford, C. Subjectivity and the intergenerational transmission of historical trauma: Holocaust survivors and their children. Subjectivity 8, 261–282 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2015.10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2015.10